Preliminary findings and further investigations revealed that the fault occurred due to an external incident that resulted in a cut that affected undersea cables like MainOne, WACS, ACE and SAT-3, in the Atlantic Ocean offshore Cote D’Ivoire, along the coast of West Africa.

MainOne, through these Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), provided further details about the suspected cause of the undersea cable outage and possible time it will take to repair it:

“1. How long will this outage last? And when do you expect repairs to be completed?

We have a maintenance agreement with Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) to provide repair services for the submarine cable.

First identify and assign a vessel, the vessel has to retrieve the necessary spares required for repair, and then sail to the fault location to conduct the repair work.

Next, to complete the repair, the affected section of the submarine cable will have to be pulled from the seabed onto the ship where it will be spliced by skilled technicians.

Post repair, joints will be inspected and tested for any defects and then the submarine cable is lowered back to the seabed and guided to a good position.

This process might take 1-2 weeks for repairs while about 2-3 weeks of transit time may be required for the vessel to pick up the spares and travel from Europe to West Africa once the vessel is mobilised.

2. What could have caused the outage in the sea?

Most submarine cable faults occur as a result of human activities such as fishing and anchoring in shallow waters near shore, natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, and then equipment failure.

Given the distance from land, and the cable depth of about 3 kms at the point of fault, any kind of human activity – ship anchors, fishing, drilling etc has been immediately ruled out.

Our preliminary analysis would suggest some form of seismic activity on the seabed resulted in a break to the cable, but we will obtain more data when the cable is retrieved during the repair exercise.

3. Is it likely that this cable cut was intentional?

Not likely given the location and cable depth, and as indicated above, we have strong indications on probable cause.

4. Which specific sea vessels are being allocated to repair the damage, and can you provide details on this?

We are working with Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) who will deploy the vessel and are unable to provide more information at this time.

5. What does this mean to our customers?

International services on our cable south of the landing in Senegal have been disrupted. This has resulted in the outage of internet services for majority of our customers.

We recognize the impact of the outage and are working tirelessly to make available restoration capacity for temporary relief, where feasible.

While we do have some pre-configured restoration capacity on other cable systems, unfortunately those cable systems are also down currently. We have since acquired capacity on available cable systems, but we have not found readily available capacity to fully restore services to all our customers.

6. MainOne has declared a Force Majeure; does this mean we will not pay service outage penalties?

A Force Majeure event describes an activity beyond our reasonable control e.g. riots, earthquakes etc. Commercial contracts typically include such a clause which enables service providers to suspend contractual obligations for the duration of such disruptions.

Nonetheless, we are working to provide restoration services to as many of our customers as possible, and to complete the repairs to the cable system in record time.

7. How come MainOne is quick to declare a Force Majeure?

MainOne declared a force majeure event subsequent to testing of the cable system and when we had enough technical data from the preliminary assessment to indicate some underwater activity was the likely cause.

We believe it is important to inform our customers of the fault details given the magnitude of the situation in order to set expectations and make contingency arrangements while the repairs are ongoing.

8. How come MainOne did not have sufficient redundancy plan in place to mitigate service disruption?

MainOne has some restoration agreements with other operators but unfortunately those cable systems are also impacted by outages at this time. We believe our submarine cable carries a significant portion of the international traffic into West Africa and provides services to multiple countries hence the magnitude of the impact.

9. What is happening now?

We are actively restoring services to the extent possible and are mobilising a vessel for repair and will update once we have more details.

10. How better can we protect our submarine cable, so this outage does not happen again?

The MainOne cable is very well protected as can be seen from the number of incidences on our cable system since inception in 2010. We have taken a lead in West Africa in championing the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), and organizing submarine cable owners associations in Nigeria and Ghana, which promote awareness of the strategic benefits of submarine cables and proactive regulations and measures to minimize submarine cable damage.

We are very optimistic that our cable will be repaired as planned and services fully restored so that we can continue to operate with continued integrity of the submarine cable”, MainOne wrote.

The post 10 FAQs On MainOne Undersea Cable Outage appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Since inception, MainOne has invested over $400m in infrastructure in West Africa as part of its efforts to bridge the digital divide and enable the digital economy.

Today, MainOne is recognized as West Africa’s leading provider of Wholesale and Enterprise connectivity and data center services.

The company led by Ms Funke Opeke as the chief executive officer, has played a critical role in enabling internet access across West Africa where penetration rates have grown from less than 10% in 2010 to close to 40% ten years later.

In celebration of her 10th anniversary of delivering innovative, world-class service in West Africa, TechEconomy.ng presents ten (10) milestones of MainOne:

1. Launch of First Private Submarine Cable

2010 saw the official launch of MainOne, a 7000km submarine cable which runs from Seixal, Portugal through Accra, Ghana to Lagos, Nigeria with branching units in Morocco, Canary Islands, Senegal, and Ivory Coast.

MainOne became the first, African-owned company to lay International communications cable delivering open-access, broadband capacity in West Africa.

2. Launch of Metro Ethernet and Voice Services in Lagos and Accra

In 2012, MainOne secured ISP and Metro Fiber Licenses in Nigeria, deployed ASN 37282 IP/NGN network.

MainOne continued to grow metro fiber in Lagos, Accra and launched Metro Ethernet Services and Voice Services while deploying new Points of Presence (PoPs) in Abuja, Port Harcourt and Accra.

3. Birth of West Africa’s first Tier III Data Center, MDXi 

2015 saw the launch of the first, state of the art, Tier III Data Center in Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria.

This 600-rack space facility, touted by experts as the biggest, custom-built Tier III Data Center in West Africa, addressed the growing demand for in-country hosting facility. MDXi went on to achieve PCI DSS, ISO27001 and 9001 certifications and earned a Frost and Sullivan award for “Advanced Data Center Infrastructure in West Africa” the same year.

4. Launch of Cloud Services

In 2015, MainOne ventured into providing Cloud services to its enterprise customers, helping them reduce business overheads by eliminating hardware costs.

The flagship cloud offering, the MDXI Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) solution, is fully hosted on enterprise-grade hardware within its tier III data centre in Lagos.

MainOne reseller programme was launched during a training programme in partnership with Edo State Government

MainOne has since grown to become preferred regional partner with the leading technology giants as Microsoft and AWS and in 2019 we won:

• Winner of the Africa Cloud Service Provider of the year, DataCloud Africa Awards, 2019
• Winner of the Excellence in Data Center Award: Africa, DataCloud Africa Awards, 2019

5. Cable extension to Cameroun

MainOne extended its submarine cable to Cameroun in 2015 with branching ports in Escravos, Delta State, Qua Iboe in Akwa Ibom State and Bonny Island in Rivers State.

This 1,100 km Nigerian Cameroun Cable System was built in partnership with Cameroun Telecommunications (CAMTEL) and delivered an additional 12.8Tbps capacity to Cameroun.

6. SME-IN-A-BOX product offerings

In 2016, MainOne launched a tailored solution for small businesses to achieve their digital transformation objectives.

This included a bundled solution of fibre connectivity, voice, cloud and productivity tools at very cost-effective packages to drive SMEs growth and productivity.

7. Compliance & Certifications

To ensure we exceed our customers’ requirements in line with international standards, MainOne is licensed and certified by various standards organizations including Tier III Constructed Facility certification (TCCF) from the Uptime Institute, ISO27001, ISO9001, PCI-DSS, SAP certifications.

8. Launch of WAF-IX

MainOne partnered with global IXP Platform provider, Asteroid, to launch a carrier- neutral, Internet Exchange Point for West Africa (WAF-IX) to improve accessibility, lower costs and reduced latency for Internet users in West Africa.

9. Strategic Partnerships

In 2019 MainOne had strategic partnership with major global companies such as Facebook on open access fiber network in Nigeria with metro fiber build in Edo and Ogun States of Nigeria; Avanti Communications to deliver satellite services to enterprises in remote locations in Nigeria; and Zenlayer to expand connectivity between international companies and West Africa

10. Hello Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal!

2019 also witnessed the historical landing of MainOne Cable in Grand-Bassam, Cote D’Ivoire and Dakar; the construction of another Tier III Data Center as well as the official launch of service in Cote D’Ivoire.

Reflecting on 10 years in business, the Chief Executive Officer of MainOne, Ms. Funke Opeke, said:

“We started on this journey to deploy critical infrastructure to bridge the digital divide in West Africa. While we are pleased that we have made an impact, there is so much more work to be done. The recent challenges we have faced with COVID-19 Pandemic highlight the need for additional investment and smarter policies to deploy shared infrastructure required to make access to broadband a reality for more Africans at a price they can afford. MainOne has been leading that charge across West Africa for ten years and we are even more committed to realizing our vision today than we were 10 years ago”.

Happy 10th Anniversary to MainOne!

The post MainOne is 10! Here are 10 pivotal moments in the company’s history appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.