The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has that telecom operators have now restored up to 90% of voice and data services disrupted by the recent undersea cable cuts.
The Commission disclosed this in a statement signed by its Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Muoka on Monday.
According to the statement, all operators who were impacted by the cuts have taken recovery capacity from submarine cables that were not impacted by the cuts and have “thus recovered approximately 90% of their peak utilization capacities.”
What the NCC is saying
Providing an update on the submarine cable, which has impacted the services of telecom companies, banks and many other corporate businesses, the NCC said:
- “Following the disruption on March 14, 2024, which affected data and voice services due to cuts in undersea fibre optics along the coasts of Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, we are pleased to announce that services have now been restored to approximately 90% of their peak utilization capacities.
- “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.”
WIOCC’s intervention
Meanwhile, West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) a digital backbone not affected by the cuts has been leading the continent’s response to the cable cuts currently affecting the WACS, ACE, Main One and SAT3 subsea systems on Africa’s western seaboard.
Highlighting the company’s role in addressing the internet service disruption in Nigeria and some other West African countries, Group CEO of WIOCC, Chris Wood, said:
- “Immediately the four subsea cables were severed off the coast of Cote d‘Ivoire our engineering, operations, and field teams swung into action.
- “They have been working tirelessly for the last 48 hours with our strategic network partners and equipment suppliers and will, within the next 24 hours, have activated an unprecedented additional 2 Terabits per second (Tbps) of capacity across the unaffected cables in our network to support the capacity needs of other network operators and hyperscalers.
- “Our clients connected directly at Open Access Data Centres (OADC) data centres in South Africa and Nigeria are already protected from the impact of the subsea outages due to the unique levels of redundancy and scale of the WIOCC core backbone.
- “In Lagos, the Equiano cable, in which WIOCC owns a fibre pair, has not been affected by the incident off Cote d‘Ivoire.”
WIOCC lands the cable directly into the OADC data centre, establishing resilient digital ecosystem hub in Lagos and offering direct connectivity to Europe and South Africa.
As a result, OADC’s data centres and WIOCC’s hyperscale network are playing a key role in restoring services to other facilities and operators currently suffering outages in Lagos and elsewhere on the continent.
