Title: Users in Africa may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services or features
User impact: Users in Africa may have been unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services or features.
Final status: After extended monitoring, we’ve confirmed that the additional capacity within the service along with the network optimizations previously performed has successfully resolved the issue.
Scope of impact: The issue primarily impacted users within the Africa region. However, users in other geographic locations may have been impacted if their connections were routed through impacted networking components.
Start time: Thursday, March 14, 2024, at 10:30 AM UTC
End time: Monday, March 18, 2024, at 2:00 AM UTC
Preliminary root cause: Multiple fiber cables on the West Coast of Africa were damaged, which reduced the total supporting capacity for the region. Additionally, a portion of our infrastructure intended to support traffic in failover scenarios wasn’t operating as expected. These incidents together reduced the network capacity for most of Africa’s regions.
Next steps:
– We’re continuing efforts to optimize our network and build additional back-up capacity. We’ll also continue to monitor the service to ensure it remains stable.
A post-incident report will be available on the Service Health Dashboard within five business days.
