Damages to undersea cables in the Red Sea caused outages that have impacted service providers across part of Africa, including Nigeria.
Multiple African Internet Service Providers (ISPs), telecoms companies and industries like banks that rely on the affected cables have suffered outages across the continent following the submarine cable cuts, according to industry insiders.
A report from the African Submarine Cables describes that situation as “very bad” with service providers across countries where a number of the affected undersea cables have landed have recorded service outages.
Bayobab Group: Damaged undersea cables affecting several West African countries
Subsea or submarine cables are fibre optic cables that connect countries across the world via cables laid on the ocean floor. These cables – often thousands of miles in length – are able to transmit huge amounts of data rapidly from one point to another, according to Data Center Dynamics.
Bayobab Group, the fibre company owned by South Africa’s MTN Group said a statement Thursday that the undersea cable damage has caused connectivity disruptions.
“Bayobab Group acknowledges the ongoing disruptions affecting connectivity services in several West African countries, due to breaks in multiple major undersea cables. Recognising the critical importance of consistent internet and communication services, we are fully committed to swiftly addressing these disruptions,” according to the tech company formerly called MTN GlobalConnect.
“To mitigate the impact on our customers in the affected countries,” Bayobab said, “our operations are actively working to reroute traffic through alternative network paths and engaging with our consortium partners to expedite the repair process for the damaged cables. Leveraging our robust and resilient network infrastructure, we aim to minimise service interruptions and maintain connectivity.”
MTN Nigeria said in an update to customers on Thursday that the damage to undersea cables in East and West Africa is responsible for some of the challenges faced by its subscribers in accessing the internet and data services.
“We apologise for the challenges you may be experiencing with internet speed and accessing data services at the moment,” MTN said.
According to the largest mobile phone company in Nigeria, “This is as a result of damage to international undersea cable across East and West Africa.”
MTN said that the repair process is underway “to resolve the situation as soon as possible.”
MainOne: We experienced fault on our submarine cable system
MainOne, one of the undersea cable companies said to have been affected by the damage to cable along the Red Sea said in a statement on Thursday that “all hands are fully on deck to repair the cable and restore all services.”
“Earlier today, Thursday, March 14, 2024,” the undersea cable company owned by Equinix, Inc said, “we experienced a fault on the MainOne network. Based on preliminary findings, the fault resulted from an incident on our submarine cable system, offshore the coast of West Africa, that has also affected other cable systems and is disrupting international connectivity and Internet services to countries across West Africa.”
MainOne said that, “We are working with cable systems that are not affected by this incident or previous outages to secure restoration capacity and our technical team is working assiduously to begin the restoration of services, subject to availability of capacity and service configuration specifics. We will also provide incremental updates on the root cause and efforts to repair the submarine cable as soon as those details become available.”
According to the company, “We want to assure our customers that all hands are fully on deck to repair the cable and restore all services and the MainOne quality that you have come to rely on.”
Ghana: Undersea cable outages impacting internet, data services
In Ghana where the impact has also be felt, the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications said the country has also felt the impact of the damaged undersea cables.
“There are outages on multiple submarine optic fibre cables that into Ghana. Some of the cable are down, while others are delivering limited capacity,” according to Louis Bobbie Osei of Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications.
“This is impacting internet, data and Voice over IP (VOIP) services of the members of the Chamber, the Mobile Network Operators and the Data Service Providers to varying degrees As a result, customers and subscribers are currently experiencing service challenges,” the statement said.
According to the Chamber, “Further investigations are being carried out as well as work to resolve the current problems to restore service to our customers.”
Industry insiders said that the service disruptions caused by the damage to submarine cables in the Red Sea is forcing service providers to reroute as much as a quarter of traffic, hence causing hiccups and significant disruption to communications networks.
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