March 14th 2024 had millions of telecommunications users, subscribers and even bank users lament and complaint of paralyzed service and for many disconnection.
News reaching Festaconline media according to Bloomberg that the West Africa Cable System, MainOne and ACE sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected on Thursday.
Many Telecommunications subscribers and bank users were stranded for hours, some had trouble accessing digital transactions via bank apps and USSD for hours even internet communication had serious bottlenecks.
Telecommunications subscribers and bank users were stranded for hours as the disruption paralyzed digital transactions and internet communications.
What Caused This ?
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.
Recall in 2018, 10 West African countries were completely offline for 48 hours, due to damages to the African Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable.
MainOne’s 14,000 km submarine cable system also disrupted the Internet in 2017 across West Africa. This time, however, Internet troubles seem to go beyond Africa to some European countries, which could mean a more severe problem this time.
Who Else is Affected ?
Asides Nigeria, many countries in the West, East, and Central African region were affected. Countries such as Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Benin, Ghana, and Cameroon also experienced the Internet outages as major undersea cables have been damaged. According to Ghana’s Chamber of Telecommunications in a statement on Thursday, March 14 2024 that there are outages on multiple submarine cables that enter the country. It said these outages are affecting mobile network operators and Internet service providers to varying degrees which has caused subscribers to experience bad connections.
Internet connection in some parts of Africa has worsened due to undersea cable breakage. According to NetBlocks, a website that provides data on Internet connectivity worldwide, outages in West Africa have been the worst in Africa.
“Live network data show today’s telecoms disruption in Africa has intensified; the incident has high impact to West Africa with significant reductions in connectivity evident across the continent; operators report multiple subsea cable failures.”
ITWeb also reported that South African IT company, Dimension Data informed its customers that there was a cable failure on the West Africa Cable System, which prompted the company to run traffic through Internet provider, Seacom. However, Seacom’s Internet cable was recently damaged in the Red Sea and it is still waiting for a permit to fix it.
Who is Responsible ?
Although unconfirmed Houthi rebels have been blamed for the cable damage. And while service providers are working to remedy the problem, there has been no communication on when the problem will be solved.
It was reported in February that Houthi rebels were responsible for the destruction, which has affected four Internet cables, — AAE-1, Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and TGN systems.
Although Yemeni Houthi leader, Abdel Malek al-Houthi, refutes accusations of targeting internet cables. He firmly stated, “We have no intention of targeting sea cables providing internet to countries in the region.” Meanwhile, The Houthis have since blamed British and US military units operating in the area for the damage.
Although Seacom could not confirm that the rebels were responsible for the cable destruction, it said, “the location of the cable break is significant due to its geopolitical sensitivity and ongoing tensions, making it a challenging environment for maintenance and repair operations,”