Monster MetroFibre outage

Fibre network operator (FNO) MetroFibre was hit by a major network outage affecting numerous fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) customers in at least four provinces on Friday, 23 February 2024.

According to reports on outage tracking website Downdetector, customers first noticed problems with their Internet connectivity on MetroFibre’s network sometime between 05:30 and 06:00.

At 07:01, Internet service provider (ISP) Afrihost placed a notice on its fibre network status portal notifying users that MetroFibre was aware of the outage, which the ISP categorised as “High impact”.

“Metrofibre has informed us of a network outage affecting Gauteng, Mpumalanga, North West and Limpopo,” the notice stated. “Affected clients will experience no Internet connection.

Afrihost said that MetroFibre engineers were working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused,” Afrihost told its customers.

The ISP posted the same message on its X account.

Another major ISP — Vox — made multiple posts on X about MetroFibre outages in various areas, including in KwaZulu-Natal, which was not on the list communicated the FNO had sent to ISPs.

It is possible that these outages were unrelated to what appears to be the more extensive multi-province outage.

MetroFibre explains cause

MetroFibre told MyBroadband the problem was caused by a power outage on some of its own equipment at data centre company Teraco’s Isando campus in Johannesburg.

“We are aware and are still assessing which customers are affected as well as number of customers,” MetroFibre said. “MetroFibre Go on Openserve is also affected.”

The FNO added that technicians were on site to attend to the issue and emphasised that it was not Teraco Isando’s power to MetroFibre that caused problem.

MetroFibre is South Africa’s fourth-largest FNO, with more than 500,000 homes passed with FTTH connectivity by November 2023, 160,000 of which were connected.

The graph below from Downdetector shows the increase in reports of issues on MetroFibre’s network on Friday morning.