Preventive maintenance works on the East African Marine Systems cable aimed at reinforcement of the cable protection at Mombasa offshore against external aggression are planned for January - April 2013.

The actual downtime of the system will be from January 3 to January 15 but the four-month works will not be service affecting. However, customers are likely to experience slow internet speeds because of bandwidth constraints as result of limited traffic restoration via other cables.

The maintenance works have been designed to reduce chances of cable damage by external aggressors following a couple of cable cuts experienced by Teams cable at Mombasa early this year.

"The timing for first week of January 2013 has been specifically chosen to coincide with the slack period at the beginning of the year to minimise impact on live traffic," said Teams general manager Joel Tanui.