The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) has announced the restoration of calls and data services following the disruption caused by damages to undersea fiber optics along West African coasts.
In a statement signed by Reuben Muoka, the NCC’s Director of Public Affairs, dated 18th March 2024, the commission said that “services have now been restored to approximately 90% of their peak utilization capacities.”
“All operators who were impacted by the cuts have taken recovery capacity from submarine cables, which were not impacted by the cuts, and have thus recovered approximately 90% of their peak utilization capacities,” the statement said.
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According to the statement, Mobile Network Operators have assured the Commission that data and voice services would operate optimally pending full repairs of the undersea cables as they have managed to activate alternative connectivities to bring back the situation to normalcy.
“We extend our appreciation to telecom consumers for their patience and understanding during the downtime caused by the undersea fibre cuts,” the commission said.
On Thursday, a widespread internet outage hit West, Central, and Southern Africa, plunging countries across the continent into connectivity chaos.
Reports from the Internet observatory Netblocks indicated that on Thursday, a widespread internet outage struck West, Central, and Southern Africa, throwing countries across the continent into a state of connectivity chaos.
According to Netblocks, multiple subsea cables experienced failures, leading to extensive disruptions that affected the affected nations profoundly.
While the exact cause of the cable failures remains unclear, the outage’s impact was significant across various sectors. Netblocks’ data painted a grim picture, highlighting severe outages in Ivory Coast, a crucial economic center in the region. Additionally, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso faced substantial disruptions, exacerbating challenges for businesses, government agencies, and ordinary citizens who rely on stable internet connectivity.
Cloudflare’s analysis revealed a noticeable pattern in the timing of the disruptions, suggesting a coordinated impact that spanned geographical boundaries from northern to southern Africa. This synchronized disruption underscored the systemic nature of the outage, prompting questions about the underlying causes and vulnerabilities of the region’s digital infrastructure.
The economic consequences of the internet outage were profound, with businesses across various industries grappling with the sudden loss of connectivity. The abrupt disruption in internet services dealt a severe blow to productivity and revenue generation, exacerbating operational challenges in an already difficult economic environment.
On Friday, the NCC reassured ongoing repair efforts to address the damages, noting that similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, such as Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), have also been cut at various points around the Red Sea, resulting in service degradation along these routes.