The Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has promised that the quality of voice and data services offered by telecommunications companies that were affected by the undersea cable cuts will be completely restored today.
This was made known by the Chairman of the association, Gbenga Adebayo in an exclusive interview with Punch, yesterday. In the interview, Adebayo expressed confidence that services would be fully back by Tuesday.
“From the progress we have seen, services will be restored completely tomorrow (Tuesday). We are almost there. There are many submarine cables routed to Nigeria. Some are routed through the Ivory Coast and Senegal. Others are routed in other directions. So, the incident in reference was an incident affecting just that particular route”, he explained.
Mr Adebayo also indicated that none of the telcos operating in Nigeria was exempted from the impact of the disruption. However, he explained that the degree of the impact on each player is not the same.
“Every telco was affected by the cable cut because it was a major link to Nigeria. The degree of the impact may differ for network providers. All communications in West Africa were affected. There was no exemption. It’s not just Nigeria”, he said.
The chairman also underscored the substantial efforts being undertaken by the operators to minimise the impact of the disruption on the users.
Recall that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) announced yesterday that voice and data services affected by the cable cuts have been restored to approximately 90% of their peak utilization capacities. In its statement, the NCC noted that operators impacted by the cuts have taken recovery capacity from submarine broadband fibres not impacted by the cuts.
Mr Adebayo corroborated the announcement by the NCC and further explained that the incident is not unusual: “The other operators not following that route were not affected. So, they improvised an alternate route. It could have also been the other way, with other people routing their traffic the other way. It is a common thing in network planning”, he shared.
Undersea cable cuts: how we got here
Recall that four undersea telecommunications cables went offline around the same time on Thursday, 14 March 2024 — the West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT–3. Bloomberg reports gathered that the damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire.
These outages caused major Internet disruptions across the continent, including Nigeria and South Africa.
In Nigeria for instance, bank customers and telecom subscribers have been bearing the brunt of the internet service disruption as many could not transact business on their accounts. Telecom data services have become very poor, frustrating many subscribers.
According to reports from local media, the undersea damage has also caused a massive internet problem in South Africa.
South African publication, My Broadband reported that WIOCC group business development head Darren Bedford confirmed that multiple undersea cables operating along Africa’s West coast are experiencing outages.
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Bedford said their capacity on the Equiano broadband fibre had not been impacted. WIOCC also has capacity on the East cost EASSy cable. Due to this redundant capacity, Bedford said the outage will not impact their customers.
Vodacom, one of South Africa’s telecom operators, has also confirmed the resulting internet outages.
The U.S. Geological Survey did not detect any earthquakes in the vicinity of the cable cuts last week. However, this does not rule out other possible activity on the seabed. Due to the depth, MainOne has all but ruled out sabotage.
5 weeks for the rest of the continent?
Meanwhile, a report yesterday indicated that fixing the damaged undersea fibres and restoring full service would take at least 5 weeks.
Read here: NIMC denies data breach as Ghana’s NCA says repairs could take 5 weeks
Ghana’s National Communication Authority arrived at this conclusion after a meeting with four subsea cable landing service providers and telcos. The landing service providers include the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), Equinix’s MainOne, South Atlantic 3, and the West Africa Cable System.
At the meeting, the landing service providers revealed the approximate location of the damage and noted that they had made arrangements to send repair vessels to the location.
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