Despite ongoing demolitions of properties and recreational centres in Lagos to expedite the construction of the highway, telecom operators have stated they had not been consulted on potential risks or mitigation measures.

The lack of dialogue with the government has prompted telcos to caution Hitech Construction, the firm handling the project, to exercise vigilance to prevent damage to critical national infrastructure along the coastal lines.

Punch report quoted the Gbenga Adebayo, the chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, saying,

“There hasn’t been any damage done or any incident, and we haven’t been consulted as well. I think the message is clear: caution has to be taken while working in that quadrant. So, so far, no notice and no consultation.”

The coastal corridor of the Lagos-Calabar highway plays a pivotal role as a landing site for several submarine cables linking Nigeria to Europe.

These cables, such as the West Africa Cable System, MainOne, Glo1, ACE, and NCSCS, are essential for facilitating international communications and data transmission within the country.

Also commenting, Tony Emoekpere, the president of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria said that while there was no official invitation, there was a publication indicating the government’s invitation for stakeholder consultations.

However, he stressed the importance of proactive engagement to address potential risks and ensure the protection of vital infrastructure.

“I got the information that the coastal highway may not really impact or disrupt some areas. However, I have seen a publication indicating that the Federal Government invited stakeholders for consultation,” he said.

He allayed fears that some areas along the coastal corridors may not be impacted by the highway construction.

[Source]

NetBlocks, in a post on its verified X hande, stated,

“Network data show a disruption to Internet connectivity in and around multiple East African countries.”

It was noted that Tanzania and the French Island of Mayotte were experiencing a high impact on Internet connectivity, while Mozambique and Malawi were seeing a medium impact.

https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1789660992902730235

Another Internet firm, Cloudflare, also confirmed on X that connectivity disruptions were ongoing in Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, and Madagascar.

Earlier, Safaricom, Kenya’s biggest telecoms operator, announced that it had activated redundancy measures to minimise service interruption and keep subscribers connected as they await the full restoration of the cable.

The telecom operator, however, said subscribers would experience reduced Internet speeds.

In March 2024, internet disruptions were reported in West African countries including Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso, as well as South Africa.

The outages were attributed to damage to four sub-sea cables off the west coast of Africa, which disrupted connectivity across the continent.

The affected cables included the West Africa Cable System, MainOne, South Atlantic 3, and ACE sea cables, which are critical for telecommunications data.

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The outage affected banks and telecommunications organizations that depend on the impacted cables for internet services.

Major undersea cables close to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, were reportedly damaged, and this caused internet outages in West and South African nations.

The West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3 are the undersea cables that were impacted hence the disruption of services.

However, Glo1, which is owned by Globacom, was unaffected by the damage and has continually been running.

Industry observers are of the view that Glo1 International Submarine Cable’s resilient construction and durability are the reasons the damage did not compromise the cable.

Glo1 -powered financial institutions, internet service providers, and data consumers have been carrying on with business as usual and have continued to provide service to their customers.

This development has been commended by a cross section of Nigerians, hailing the company for its commitment to delivering efficient services to millions of its subscribers.

WIOCC, the parent company of Open Access Data Centres (OADC), said 35 networks across West African countries, Nigeria inclusive, have been restored to full capacity resilience.

Mr. Chris Wood, WIOCC’s CEO, who gave the update via a virtual press conference, explained that it will take another four weeks to fully restore internet services to all network operators that are connected to the affected four submarine cables that came from Europe, with landing points along the West African coast.

WIOCC ’s highly resilient network, with hyperscale capacity on every major system is the largest in Africa and ideally placed to swiftly deliver restoration solutions to hyperscalers, fixed and mobile carriers, internet service providers and other clients, enabling them to quickly re-establish key traffic routes into, within and out of Africa, thereby minimising performance degradation for their end-customers.

According to Wood, it will cost a total of about $2 million to achieve full restoration to a single subsea cable, depending on the extent of the cut on the cable.

This brings it to a total of about $8 million to fix the affected four submarine cables that were affected by the cut.

Wood however said the owners of the affected cables would bear the cost of restoration of the individual subsea cables.

Affected Subsea cables:

1. MainOne Cable,
2. West African Cable System (WACS),
3. African Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable and
4. SAT3 subsea cable systems.

All four subsea cables came from Europe and they all have landing points at the coast of West African countries, including Nigeria.

Wood who ruled out the possibility of sabotage or any other factor that have been speculated to be the cause of the multiple cuts on the affected four submarine cables, said from the ongoing restoration exercise, he suspected that the cables were affected by heavy landslides from the coast of Cote d I’ voire, where debris from landslides effect may have rolled down into the ocean to cause the damages.

He however said ships have been deployed to the affected areas to carry out repairs on the affected cables, and that until the ships arrive in few days time to effect repairs and investigate the real cause of the submarine cable cuts, it would be difficult to ascertain the real cause of the multiple cuts on the affected submarine cables.

“Since the subsea cable cut, we have restored internet services to 35 networks across West Africa, amounting to 2.5 Terabytes capacity with over 100 links. We recently deployed equipment worth $100 million in accessing new cuts on undersea cables. What we did was to use our capacity on the Equiano cable that was not affected by the cut to restore services to other facilities and operators currently suffering outages in Lagos and elsewhere on the continent.”

• Recall that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), had called for a coordinated and multilateral approach by the region to protect shared telecommunications infrastructure, and diversify connectivity to ensure uninterruptible connections.

Dr. Aminu Maida, the executive vice chairman of the  Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), made the submission in a statement delivered at the 21st West Africa Telecommunications Regulatory Assembly (WATRA) Annual General Meeting (AGM), which held in Freetown, Sierra Leone, from the 19th to 22nd March 2024.

Dr. Maida, whose message was delivered at the WATRA AGM by the Deputy Director, Public Affairs of the Commission, Nnenna Ukoha, stated that the recent submarine cable cuts that resulted in nationwide outages on multiple networks in 12 African countries has raised the urgent need for the sub-region to establish a mechanism to protect itself from damage to submarine infrastructure and its attendant impact on the sub-region.

In his reaction, Wood said subsea cables all over the world could get cut for various reasons, which could be as a result of landslides, propeller from ships, among other reasons.

“What Nigeria and other West African countries need are more cables landing at the shores of the country that will lead to huge redundancy. The idea of physical security may not work because the cables are laid on the bed of the sea and no one can see exactly their locations to warrant physical protection. So having more cables is the best security measure and not physical security,” Wood said.

Although Wood said it would cost about $1 billion to berth a subsea cable from Europe to West Africa, he however insisted that multiple cable system remained the best form to address cable cuts that occur all over the world.

The WIOCC CEO further said the company’s policy of strategic deployment of converged, open-access digital infrastructure at a hyperscale level and delivery of unrivalled resiliency, enables it to meet and anticipate the needs of Africa’s wholesale community with sufficient scale and network diversity to address even the most challenging situations.

He said WIOOC was established 15 years ago to provide backbone services to organisations and their networks across West Africa.

WIOCC’s highly resilient network, with hyperscale capacity on every major system is the largest in Africa and ideally placed to swiftly deliver restoration solutions to hyperscalers, fixed and mobile carriers, internet service providers and other clients, enabling them to quickly re-establish key traffic routes into, within and out of Africa, thereby minimising performance degradation for their end-customers.

According to Chris Wood, group CEO of WIOCC, “Immediately the four subsea cables were severed off the coast of Cote d‘Ivoire our engineering, operations and field teams swung into action.

“They have been working tirelessly for the last 48 hours with our strategic network partners and equipment suppliers and will, within the next 24 hours, have activated an unprecedented additional 2 Terabits per second (Tbps) of capacity across the unaffected cables in our network to support the capacity needs of other network operators and hyperscalers. Our clients connected directly at Open Access Data Centres (OADC) data centres in South Africa and Nigeria are already protected from the impact of the subsea outages due to the unique levels of redundancy and scale of the WIOCC core backbone. In Lagos, the Equiano cable, in which WIOCC owns a fibre pair, has not been affected by the incident off Cote d‘Ivoire. WIOCC lands the cable directly into the OADC data centre, establishing the most resilient digital ecosystem hub in Lagos and offering the most direct connectivity to Europe and South Africa. As a result, OADC’s data centres and WIOCC’s hyperscale network are playing a key role in restoring services to other facilities and operators currently suffering outages in Lagos and elsewhere on the continent.”

“Our priority is to ensure minimal disruption and maximum resilience for our clients,” added Ryan Sher, Group Chief Operating Officer at WIOCC. “We have invested heavily in deploying diverse, highly scalable national and international connectivity to support the uptime requirements of our wholesale client base. Investing at scale means that we consistently carry extra capacity, ensuring we are able to rapidly turn up or re-route capacity to address unexpected network disruptions. It also enables us to deploy short-term restoration solutions for other operators on a case-by-case basis. Any service provider affected by these outages, whether an existing WIOCC client or not, is encouraged to contact us to explore options.”

He said that WIOCC’s policy of strategic deployment of converged, open-access digital infrastructure at a hyperscale level and delivery of unrivalled resiliency, enables it to meet and anticipate the needs of Africa’s wholesale community with sufficient scale and network diversity to address even the most challenging situations.