The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has alerted telecommunication (service) users in Nigeria to a combination of undersea cable cuts, resulting in equipment faults on the major undersea cables along the West African Coast.
The undersea cable on Thursday negatively impacted on data and fixed telecom services in several countries of West Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire.
According to a statement signed by Reuben Muoka, director, Public Affairs at NCC the cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.
Cable companies – WACs and ACE in the West Coast route from Europe have experienced faults while SAT3 and MainOne have downtime.
Similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, EIG, AAE1, are said to have been cut at some point around the Red Sea, resulting in degradation of services across on these routes.
In Nigeria and other West African countries, Internet access and speed have experienced disruptions in the networks of service providers in the affected countries.
Operators of these cables have commenced repairs already, and services are gradually being restored.
They have promised to work round the clock to ensure that services are restored to the affected countries within the shortest possible time.
It is important to bring this information to the knowledge of corporate and individual consumers on these services.
Similarly, Angola Cable released a statement titled: ‘Disruption to international submarine cables off the West African coast (WACS, SAT-3, MainOne, ACE)’.
The Angola Cable said whilst the cause of the reported cable breaks off the Cote d’Ivoire of West Africa has not yet been confirmed, it is ensuring that the impact on Angola and other African countries is being minimised by redirecting international data and traffic to the SACS cable, which connects Angola directly to Brazil and from there to the United States and Europe.
“Angola Cables has network backup and restoration solutions available through cables that have not been affected by the faults off the Cote d’Ivoire.
“Our technical team is currently diligently working with industry partners to stabilise international connectivity and to ensure that we can provide support and guarantee the stability of services to African network operators and entities that need it”, the company said.
Techeconomy broke the news following the acknowledgement by Bayobab Group which said that connectivity disruptions faced in parts of West Africa including Nigeria was due to undersea cable damage.
The undersea cable affected the internet connectivity of major Mobile Network Operators in Nigeria and neigbouring West African countries.
A statement by Bayobab Group acknowledged the ongoing disruptions affecting connectivity services in several West African countries, due to breaks in multiple major undersea cables.
Also, MTN Nigeria released a statement in which the largest telecom company in Nigeria apologized to its subscribers over the network outage.
The statement reads: “We apologise for the challenges you may be experiencing with internet speed and accessing data services at the moment.
“This is as a result of damage to international undersea cables across East and West Africa.
“The repair process is ongoing to resolve the situation as soon as possible. Please loot out for further updates”, the statement concludes.”
