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.

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.”

South Africa has recently grappled with a substantial disruption in its internet connectivity due to the unfortunate damage sustained by two critical undersea communication cables, namely the West Africa Cable System (WACS) and the South Atlantic Telecommunications Cable number three (SAT-3), occurring in the Congo Canyon.

These unforeseen undersea cable failures have reverberated across the region, impacting network operators and internet users alike, resulting in delayed website loading times and potential service interruptions.

Commenting on the development, Matone Ditlhake, Corridor Africa CEO said while these subsea cables largely remain hidden from public view, they serve as essential conduits for global internet connectivity, enabling the rapid transmission of telecommunications signals worldwide, thus facilitating seamless internet access and communication.

“As a direct consequence of these cable outages, South African network operators have grappled with increased strain on their network capacities, leading to heightened traffic volumes and challenges in promptly addressing these issues,” he explains.

Service providers vary in their dependence on the affected cables, leading to discrepancies in the severity of disruptions experienced. Consequently, some entities may encounter more significant impacts than others.

The initial disruption in traffic flow, stemming from the cable damages, is expected to have a particularly notable effect on customers utilising international private leased circuit services.

To counteract these challenges, certain mobile operators have taken proactive steps, including bolstering capacity on unaffected cable routes and conducting traffic engineering to alleviate potential bottlenecks.

Despite these concerted efforts, it’s important to note that websites hosted in the US or Europe may still experience delays or service failures when accessed from South Africa, and vice versa, owing to the reduced international capacity. Internet service providers are diligently labouring to restore full capacity while concurrently embarking on the extensive repair process, which is estimated to span several weeks. 

Currently, the maintenance and repair of these undersea cables are in progress, with the cable ship, the Leon Thevenin, actively engaged in repair operations near Kenya. Weather permitting, we anticipate the cables will be fully restored to operational status by the second week of September.

Corridor Africa Technologies is steadfastly monitoring the situation and working in close cooperation with South African telecommunications companies to minimise the impact of these disruptions and ensure the swift reestablishment of dependable internet connectivity for all users.

“We sincerely appreciate the understanding and patience exhibited by South African internet users during this period of inconvenience. Rest assured, every possible effort is being exerted to expedite the restoration process and enhance internet connectivity throughout the region,” he concludes.

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