Five things to know about internet disruptions caused by undersea cable cut
Nigerians including telecommunications companies, banks, and media among others were on Thursday hit by an internet outage as a result of damage to international undersea cables supplying them with connectivity.
Confirming the incident, the Nigerian government said the damage affects major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and is causing downtime across West and South African countries.
The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), in a statement through its Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Muoka, said the cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.
It said that cable companies – West African Cable System (WACS) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) in the West Coast route from Europe – had experienced faults, while SAT3 and MainOne had downtime.
The regulatory body added that similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), were said to have been cut at some point around the Red Sea.
This, it said, resulted in the degradation of services across these routes.
Below are some key things to know about the internet disruptions.
1). Cause of the network outage
In a statement on Friday, MainOne network, whose facilities provide internet services to many parts of western and southern Africa, said on Thursday, 14 March, at 7:43 GMT, it experienced a fault in its network and its investigation revealed that 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, experienced a fault that has also affected other cable systems and is disrupting international connectivity and internet services to countries across West Africa.”
2). How long will the outage last?
It explained that the MainOne submarine cable carries a significant portion of the international traffic into West Africa and provides services to multiple countries hence the magnitude of the impact.
The company said it has a maintenance agreement with the “Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) to provide repair services for the submarine cable.”
The service provider added that the steps to be taken include first identifying and assigning a vessel to retrieve the necessary spares required for repair and then sailing to the fault location to conduct the repair work.
It said that the next step in order to complete the repair, the affected section of the submarine cable will have to be pulled from the seabed onto the ship where it will be spliced by skilled technicians.
“Post repair, joints will be inspected and tested for any defects and then the submarine cable is lowered back to the seabed and guided to a good position. This process might take 1-2 weeks for repairs while about 2-3 weeks of transit time may be required for the vessel to pick up the spares and travel from Europe to West Africa once the vessel is mobilised,” it said.
3). The cause of the outage in the sea
It added that most submarine cable faults occur as a result of human activities such as fishing and anchoring in shallow waters near shore, natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, and then equipment failure.
“Given the distance from land, and the cable depth of about 3 km at the point of fault, any kind of human activity, ship anchors, fishing, drilling etc has been immediately ruled out.
“Our preliminary analysis would suggest some form of seismic activity on the seabed resulted in a break to the cable, but we will obtain more data when the cable is retrieved during the repair exercise.”
The company said it is working with Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) which will deploy the vessel and is unable to provide more information at this time.
4). What it means to customers
The service provider noted that international services on its cable south of the landing in Senegal have been disrupted.
This, it said has resulted in the outage of internet services for the majority of its customers.
ALSO READ: Undersea Cable Cut: MainOne provides more info, says service restored to some customers
“We recognize the impact of the outage and are working tirelessly to make available restoration capacity for temporary relief, where feasible.
“While we do have some pre-configured restoration capacity on other cable systems, unfortunately, those cable systems are also down currently. We have since acquired capacity on available cable systems, but we have not found readily available capacity to fully restore services to all our customers,” it said.
5). MainOne declares a force majeure
The company also declared a force majeure, which absolves it of contractual obligations to its customers in certain circumstances.
It said that commercial contracts typically included such a force majeure clause which enabled service providers to suspend contractual obligations for the duration of such disruptions.
The company said it is working to provide restoration services to as many of our customers as possible and to complete the repairs to the cable system in record time.
“MainOne declared a force majeure event subsequent to testing of the cable system and when we had enough technical data from the preliminary assessment to indicate some underwater activity was the likely cause.
“We believe it is important to inform our customers of the fault details given the magnitude of the situation in order to set expectations and make contingency arrangements while the repairs are ongoing.”
The statement said MainOne has some restoration agreements with other operators but unfortunately, those cable systems are also impacted by outages at this time.
“We believe our submarine cable carries a significant portion of the international traffic into West Africa and provides services to multiple countries hence the magnitude of the impact.
“We are actively restoring services to the extent possible and are mobilising a vessel for repair and will update once we have more details.”
According to the statement, the MainOne cable is very well protected as can be seen from the number of incidences on our cable system since inception in 2010.
“We have taken a lead in West Africa in championing the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) and organizing submarine cable owners associations in Nigeria and Ghana, which promote awareness of the strategic benefits of submarine cables and proactive regulations and measures to minimize submarine cable damage.
“We are very optimistic that our cable will be repaired as planned and services fully restored so that we can continue to operate with the continued integrity of the submarine cable,” the company said.
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Nigerians including telecommunications companies, banks, and media among others were on Thursday hit by an internet outage as a result of damage to international undersea cables supplying them with connectivity.
Confirming the incident, the Nigerian government said the damage affects major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and is causing downtime across West and South African countries.
The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), in a statement through its Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Muoka, said the cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.
It said that cable companies – West African Cable System (WACS) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) in the West Coast route from Europe – had experienced faults, while SAT3 and MainOne had downtime.
The regulatory body added that similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), were said to have been cut at some point around the Red Sea.
This, it said, resulted in the degradation of services across these routes.
Below are some key things to know about the internet disruptions.
1). Cause of the network outage
In a statement on Friday, MainOne network, whose facilities provide internet services to many parts of western and southern Africa, said on Thursday, 14 March, at 7:43 GMT, it experienced a fault in its network and its investigation revealed that 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, experienced a fault that has also affected other cable systems and is disrupting international connectivity and internet services to countries across West Africa.”
2). How long will the outage last?
It explained that the MainOne submarine cable carries a significant portion of the international traffic into West Africa and provides services to multiple countries hence the magnitude of the impact.
The company said it has a maintenance agreement with the “Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) to provide repair services for the submarine cable.”
The service provider added that the steps to be taken include first identifying and assigning a vessel to retrieve the necessary spares required for repair and then sailing to the fault location to conduct the repair work.
It said that the next step in order to complete the repair, the affected section of the submarine cable will have to be pulled from the seabed onto the ship where it will be spliced by skilled technicians.
“Post repair, joints will be inspected and tested for any defects and then the submarine cable is lowered back to the seabed and guided to a good position. This process might take 1-2 weeks for repairs while about 2-3 weeks of transit time may be required for the vessel to pick up the spares and travel from Europe to West Africa once the vessel is mobilised,” it said.
3). The cause of the outage in the sea
It added that most submarine cable faults occur as a result of human activities such as fishing and anchoring in shallow waters near shore, natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, and then equipment failure.
“Given the distance from land, and the cable depth of about 3 km at the point of fault, any kind of human activity, ship anchors, fishing, drilling etc has been immediately ruled out.
“Our preliminary analysis would suggest some form of seismic activity on the seabed resulted in a break to the cable, but we will obtain more data when the cable is retrieved during the repair exercise.”
The company said it is working with Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) which will deploy the vessel and is unable to provide more information at this time.
4). What it means to customers
The service provider noted that international services on its cable south of the landing in Senegal have been disrupted.
This, it said has resulted in the outage of internet services for the majority of its customers.
ALSO READ: Undersea Cable Cut: MainOne provides more info, says service restored to some customers
“We recognize the impact of the outage and are working tirelessly to make available restoration capacity for temporary relief, where feasible.
“While we do have some pre-configured restoration capacity on other cable systems, unfortunately, those cable systems are also down currently. We have since acquired capacity on available cable systems, but we have not found readily available capacity to fully restore services to all our customers,” it said.
5). MainOne declares a force majeure
The company also declared a force majeure, which absolves it of contractual obligations to its customers in certain circumstances.
It said that commercial contracts typically included such a force majeure clause which enabled service providers to suspend contractual obligations for the duration of such disruptions.
The company said it is working to provide restoration services to as many of our customers as possible and to complete the repairs to the cable system in record time.
“MainOne declared a force majeure event subsequent to testing of the cable system and when we had enough technical data from the preliminary assessment to indicate some underwater activity was the likely cause.
“We believe it is important to inform our customers of the fault details given the magnitude of the situation in order to set expectations and make contingency arrangements while the repairs are ongoing.”
The statement said MainOne has some restoration agreements with other operators but unfortunately, those cable systems are also impacted by outages at this time.
“We believe our submarine cable carries a significant portion of the international traffic into West Africa and provides services to multiple countries hence the magnitude of the impact.
“We are actively restoring services to the extent possible and are mobilising a vessel for repair and will update once we have more details.”
According to the statement, the MainOne cable is very well protected as can be seen from the number of incidences on our cable system since inception in 2010.
“We have taken a lead in West Africa in championing the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) and organizing submarine cable owners associations in Nigeria and Ghana, which promote awareness of the strategic benefits of submarine cables and proactive regulations and measures to minimize submarine cable damage.
“We are very optimistic that our cable will be repaired as planned and services fully restored so that we can continue to operate with the continued integrity of the submarine cable,” the company said.
Support PREMIUM TIMES’ journalism of integrity and credibility
Good journalism costs a lot of money. Yet only good journalism can ensure the possibility of a good society, an accountable democracy, and a transparent government.
For continued free access to the best investigative journalism in the country we ask you to consider making a modest support to this noble endeavour.
By contributing to PREMIUM TIMES, you are helping to sustain a journalism of relevance and ensuring it remains free and available to all.
Donate
TEXT AD: Call Willie – +2348098788999
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