Subscribers across the Mzansi reported issues with their Telkom connection from early this morning, with complaints that their internet wasn’t up to subscribed speeds.

Adding to the confusion has been the sporadic nature of these slow speeds. Issues have been reported in multiple provinces, through multiple ISPs, though parts of Johannesburg and Cape Town appear to be the most affected.

According to online fault trackers, the first widespread reports began filtering through at around 9am. Openserve has ascertained that the SAT3/WASC break is in the Libreville, Gabon vicinity and that the WACS break point is in the vicinity of Luanda, Angola.

The unusual and simultaneous dual cable break has resulted in customers, that are connected to Openserve’s global capacity clients, experiencing reduced speed on international browsing. International voice calling and mobile roaming has also been impacted

The WACS and SAT3/WASC cable systems are deployed in the Atlantic Ocean and connect South Africa and many other African countries to Europe. The WACS system lands in South Africa at Yzerfontein, Western Cape while the SAT3/WASC system enters South Africa at Melkbosstrand, Western Cape.

Webafrica acknowledged to this problems earlier through a series of tweets, though did not identify exactly how long the interruption will last for.

As of an update issued within the past three hours, however, Openserve said that it has made its resources available to both consortiums to assist wherever possible and that undersea cable infrastructure repairs are complex and can be time consuming.

It’s unclear at this stage exactly how many subscribers have been impacted, though as is to be expected some of the more vocal took to Twitter to complain about the company.

I had to get off my Telkom Fibre so that I could tweet and complain about how slow it the internet is. Wow.

— NdimhleFcukedUp (@JackDevero) January 16, 2020

2mbps download speed on a 100mbps fibre line from Telkom

— Kojo Baffoe (@kojobaffoe) January 16, 2020

First announced at CES 2018, the WiFi Q2 has an eye on the Internet of Things (IoT), promising a dedicated channel that will automatically shift connected device and smart home traffic into its own, separate lane.

It’s not, in fact, Huawei‘s first ride of the mesh networking horse. Before this new system came the Huawei WiFi Q1 in mid-2016, though the company only offered it in China. In contrast, the WiFi Q2 is now sold in Mzansi.

Here, Huawei has opted for two types of router. The core of the system is the larger base station, which has three gigabit ethernet ports. The smaller satellites have a single ethernet port, and are designed to plug straight into an outlet.

You can have up to sixteen different routers working in a single configuration. What sets Huawei’s approach apart from that of, say, Google Wifi is its use of powerline networking.

Huawei is calling it a “Hybrid Home WiFi System,” and it’s basically combining wired and wireless options. On the one hand, there’s a 1,867 Mbps wireless link between each of the units. However, they also get a 1 Gbps PLC powerline backhaul they can use instead. The WiFi Q2 automatically adjusts its use of each, choosing the best connection for each purpose and doing active load balancing to shift traffic between the two.

Huawei says that takes less than 100 ms to do, and is not perceivable to the user. The WiFi Q2 auto-selects the channel to use, but also reserves a second channel that it saves for IoT devices. There’s no manual setup for that, with Huawei promising that its mesh system can automatically spot IoT traffic and route it accordingly.

Powerline networking has another advantage, and that’s in setup. After you’ve configured the first base station, it shares all your settings over the power network with each subsequent unit you plug in. Huawei says that it means each satellite installation takes only around two minutes.

Three boxed systems will be offered, their suitability based on home size and layout. The largest will have three base stations, which Huawei suggests is sufficient for coverage across 5-7 rooms in a multi-floor home. A second set, with a single base station and two satellites, is enough for 4-5 rooms, while a pair of one base station and one satellite will do for 3-4 rooms.

Of course, you’ll also be able to buy them each individually, to expand coverage as required. Pricing for the Huawei WiFi Q2 Pro three-pack hybrid is set at  R4,999.

The company launched its Pods WiFi system about four years ago, and now Supersonic has announced that that they’re offering them with any of their packages. Anyone who signs up for the service and Plume Pods will be visited by Supersonic technicians who’ll conduct a full Wi-Fi sweep of the home and advise on how many Plume devices are required for 100% coverage results in the home.

Once the devices are installed, users can continue the set up process, based on personal preferences using the Supersonic App, opening the door for relatively inexpensive, attractive WiFi distribution.

Each of the Plume Pods, which are angular and unassuming, plug directly into a wall power outlet. Once plugged in, each of these Pods work with the Plume Cloud to provide better WiFi coverage and quality than that of a single router stowed away in a room somewhere. The idea here is that you plug a Plume pod into each room in your home for coverage that’s spread out.

The system adapts when necessary, tweaking things like resiliency, signal and speed. As well, Plume lends access to information about how fast the network is and what kind of coverage you have in your home. You can also set up guest access for granting others access to your WiFi network. Pricing for the Plume Pods will set you back R1, 099 once off OR R49 for 24 months for a single device while a R10 per device per month management fee will be charged from activation.

That is why Google has directly dived into the ISP industry, in one form or another, especially in emerging markets where Internet connectivity is still pretty much a luxury. The latter comes in the form of its Google Stations, free Wi-Fi hotspots for everyone, which is now adding the Cape Flats area as its first beneficiary in South Africa.

Google has adopted a rather interesting way of providing Internet services. With Google Station, it is also partnering with local ISPs to turn the ISP’s hotspots into Google’s high-speed public Wi-Fi platform. In other words, Google Wi-Fi for all.

That was the model that Google first launched in India, followed by Indonesia and Nigeria just to name a few. The arrival in South Africa marks the second time the Google Station has crossed over the Atlantic. Partnering with local ISP ThinkWifi, Google Station brings wifi to over 100 locations across Langa, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Delft, Elsies River, Philippi and more. These areas are some of the most underserved communities in the country, with high unemployment and crime rates.

Google Station is part of the company’s strategy to address the “Next Billion Users”, placing focus on markets where access to the Internet is inversely proportional to the hundreds of thousands of potential users, and therefore customers. It goes hand in hand with Android Go, which promises to keep data and hardware use down to a minimum, especially on entry level phones.

Vodacom has perfect timing as we’ve put the release of Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 edge behind us. These flagships, alongside Microsoft’s Lumia 640, are a few of the first phones capable of using the feature, though it’ll become available to a slew of compatible handsets “in the coming weeks.” You may be wondering why so few devices are supported at launch, and the answer lies in how Vodacom has implemented WiFi calling on its network. Where MTN – and other service providers – has created smartphone apps that let their customers make calls over WiFi, Vodacom’s solution is completely seamless. No intermediary app is needed, meaning you’ll be able to make and receive calls and texts over WiFi as you would normally, using your phone’s regular dialer and messaging app. Provided you’re a contract customer on luanch, that is, since the feature’s not available to pay-as-you-goers yet.

Taking a no-app approach isn’t without its limitations, however. For starters, your handset must have baked-in support for WiFi calling, though plenty of devices do have the necessary internals. Furthermore, the feature will only be available to Vodacom-issued smartphones, since the carrier needs to have a hand in your device’s update cycle to communicate the necessary tweaks that enable WiFi calling. At this point, we know Vodacom can do this for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones, but there’s no word on Apple devices, which are all updated without carrier intervention. Since the iPhone 5s, 5c, 6 and 6 Plus all support WiFi calling, though, we’d be extremely surprised if Apple wasn’t working with Vodacom to get the feature up and running on its hardware in the near future.