Subsea cable damage disrupts internet services in Nigeria, Ghana, others
Internet connectivity disruption in eight West African countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon Ivory Coast, Liberia, and the Benin Republic on Thursday was a result of undersea cable damage, Internet watchdog, NetBlocks ,said in a post on its X handle on Thursday.
Damage to at least three subsea cables off the West Coast of Africa disrupted internet services in Nigeria, Ghana and other countries across the continent, as banks and telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria have been down with internet outages due to damage to international undersea cables supplying them with connectivity.
Telecommunications subscribers and bank users were stranded for hours as the disruption paralysed digital transitions and internet communications.
It was learnt that damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and is causing downtime across West and South African countries.
.According to one of the world’s leading financial news organisations, Bloomberg, the West Africa Cable System, MainOne and ACE sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected on Thursday.
According to data from internet analysis firms including NetBlocks, Kentik and Cloudflare, the cut triggered outages and connectivity issues for mobile operators and internet service providers across the West African sub-region.
The cause of the cable faults has not yet been determined as of press time but in a statement, telecommunications company, MTN Nigeria, explained that the network outage experienced by its subscribers was as a “result of damage to international undersea cables across East & West Africa”.
“The repair process is ongoing to resolve the situation as soon as possible. Please look out for further updates,” the company said.
The company had also linked network outage experienced by its subscribers for the major part of February 28, 2024 on “multiple fibre cuts”.
