The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has confirmed that Internet disruptions in Nigeria on Thursday were caused by a combination of cable cuts somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal.
These cuts caused attendant disruptions in Portugal. The commission explained that it resulted in equipment faults on the major undersea cables along the West African Coast and negatively impacted data and fixed telecom services in several countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, and others.
“Cable companies – West African Cable System (WACS) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) in the West Coast route from Europe have experienced faults, while SAT3 and MainOne have downtime,” the NCC said in a statement on Thursday night.
It also highlighted that similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, Europe India Gateway, and Asia-Africa-Europe 1, have also been cut at some point around the Red Sea, resulting in the degradation of services across these routes.
“In Nigeria and other West African countries, Internet access and speed have experienced disruptions in the networks of service providers in the affected countries,” the commission stated.
Operators of the cables have commenced repairs already, and services are gradually being restored, the NCC said.
Earlier in the day, MTN Group disclosed that multiple major undersea cable breaks have disrupted Internet connectivity in Nigeria and several West African Countries.
MTN Group and sources in MainOne revealed that this disruption is affecting banks and subscribers of some network operators in Nigeria, who are experiencing an Internet downtime. Bayobab Group, a subsidiary of MTN Group, said it was working to reroute its traffic through alternative network paths.
In a statement on Thursday, MainOne stated that its preliminary findings revealed that the fault resulted from an incident on its submarine cable system offshore the coast of West Africa, “that has also affected other cable systems and is disrupting international connectivity and Internet services to countries across West Africa.”
The digital infrastructure company disclosed that it is working with cable systems that were unaffected by the incident to begin restoring services.
“We will also provide incremental updates on the root cause and efforts to repair the submarine cable as soon as those details become available,” it said.
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