The West African nation of Mauritania lost all internet access for 48 hours due to an undersea cable break, according to infrastructure analysts. From a report: The break, which took place a couple weeks ago, provides a reminder of how much internet users rely on the cables that connect their countries. According to Dyn, the Oracle-owned internet performance firm, the African Coast to Europe (ACE) cable was cut near Noukachott in Mauritania on March 30. It’s not clear what caused the break, but six countries entirely rely on that one cable for their connectivity, and all — Sierra Leone, Mauritania, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and the Gambia — saw a big impact. The impact in Mauritania was the worst, with its two-day outage, while Sierra Leone also had big problems. The latter country also had a big outage on April 1, but that may well have been down to government action — African governments are notorious for interfering with citizens’ internet access, particularly around election time or during periods of unrest.

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Source: Slashdot – A Broken Undersea Cable Knocked Mauritania Offline For Two Days, Affected Another Five Nations