NETWORK DISRUPTION: MAINONE UNDERSEA CABLE CUT. TELCOS, BANKS AFFECTED

 
Telcos resort to backup channels, banks advise customers on alternative platforms

Cable firms deploy engineers to cut points; ATCON encourages investments in local data centres

Telecoms and Banking services have been erratic if not totally disrupted in most parts of Nigeria and West Africa sub region since Thursday 14^th March, 2024.

This has been attributed to cut undersea cables belonging to the service providers. Subsea cable providers were affected by major cuts to undersea submarine cables, disrupting internet traffic in major parts of the continent.

MainOne, a digital infrastructure service provider in West Africa, has revealed that repairing its undersea submarine cables might take about three weeks.

In a statement, MainOne said an additional two to three weeks of transit time may be required for a vessel to pick up the spares of submarine cables and travel from Europe to West Africa.

A statement from Mainone said,  “the fault occurred due to an external incident that resulted in a cut on its submarine cable system, in the Atlantic Ocean offshore Cote D’Ivoire, along the coast of West Africa”.

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

The statement further said after repair, joints will be inspected and tested for any defects and subsequently, the submarine cable will be lowered back to the seabed and placed in a good position.

The service disruption caused by Thursday’s cuts to the undersea cable supplying broadband Internet connectivity to Nigeria and countries in the West African sub-region, on Friday, forced many banks and other financial institutions, as well as telecom companies and allied firms to scale down their operations.

Customers of the financial institutions and telcos were also left frustrated as they could not carry out major transactions.

13 African countries were affected, as the cut let to disruption of internet services in the affected countries, and businesses completely grounded in some of the countries.

The affected countries included Cote d’ Ivoire, Liberia, Benin Republic, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Cameroon, Gabon, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Lesotho, and parts of South Africa. 

NetBlocks, a global internet monitoring organisation, which released its preliminary report yesterday, disclosed that out of the 13 affected countries, Cote d’ Ivoire was the worst hit, which led to severe internet disruptions that brought the country’s internet connectivity to as low as four per cent.

According to a report by NetBlocks, a global internet monitoring organisation, the level of impact varied from one country to another with the worst hit being Cote d’ Ivoire where severe network disruptions that brought the country’s internet connectivity to as low as four per cent.

Level of Connectivity of the countries after the incident are:

• South Africa        82%
• Lesotho               74%
• Nigeria                 72%
• Niger                    69%
• Cameroon            58%
• Namibia               55%
• Gabon                  55%
• Togo                     42%
• Burkina Faso       38%
• Ghana                   25%
• Liberia                  25%
• Benin Republic   14%
• Cote d'Ivore           4%

It will take close to a month before normalcy can be restored to the affected sectors.

The Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) says there is a need to locally domicile content and put more investment in localised data centres to reduce the effect of disruptions in connectivity.

The President of ATCON Tony Emoekpere opined that it was important to domicile content locally to facilitate prompt fixing of disruptions and outages. He emphasized the localized contents was not affected by the cable cut.

There is nothing that can be done to forestall damage to submarine cables but there is need to domicile more content locally if not totally.

It must be noted that locally domiciled content were not affected because they were kept in data centers located in the country.

More attention should be placed on domiciling data and content locally which, apart from being cheaper and not affected by fluctuations in foreign exchange, is safer and guaranteed.

Government should invest massively in provision of local data centers especially for security and guaranteeing easily monitored connectivity.