If you are reading this, congratulations. You have internet access. But you might find that it will be a touch spotty of the next week or so, since the Seacom internet cable is undergoing emergency maintenance from today until 28 October.

MWeb pointed out the issue in an email to customers earlier today, saying “SEACOM has identified a fault on their international Internet cable in the Mediterranean, which will result in emergency maintenance taking place from 19 – 28 October.”

The company said that it has taken on extra capacity, so MWeb customers shouldn’t see much of a difference besides some extra latency during the affected period. Even so, they recommend that large file uploads and downloads be kept for off-peak hours — which will kinda make them the new peak hours, really. The upshot is that it’s not going to be any kind of a train smash.

South African internet users in general might find that they experience intermittent internet access between now and 28 October, while Seacom has its temperature taken and all the broken bits fixed up. This is just a heads-up: You might want to stock up on some offline videos or some dead-tree reading material while you can.