The Leon Thevenin, a ship carrying engineers and equipment to the West Africa Cable System (WACS) Sli cable grounds left the coast of Angola on Sunday after delays caused by coastal winds and logistics. It is expected to complete repairs on 8th February. The WACS is said to be damaged on two ends, somewhere in Libreville, Gabon and a second break near the UK.
After completing repairs on WACS, the team will move on to Gabon where they will attend to SAT-3.
On Monday, Nigerian government-backed internet service provider, Galaxy Backbone, said it has put measures in place to cushion the effects of the internet disruptions caused by the two submarine cables.
“At Galaxy Backbone, to make sure disruptions in submarine cables don’t impact our customers, we have built redundancies into our service provision with multiple upstream providers riding on different submarine cables,” the institution posted on Twitter.
The two undersea cables, the West Africa Cable System (WACS) and South Atlantic 3 (SAT 3) which connect Nigeria and other African countries to the global internet experienced accidental cuts on 16 January, 2019, which led to internet disruptions in about fourteen African countries including Nigeria. The SAT3 is partly owned by the Nigerian Telecommunications Commission (NATCOM). As of Monday, 27 January many Nigerian banks were still reporting disruptions.
“Leon Thevenin on its way to the WACS S1i cable grounds. We have a provisional repair date of the 8th February for the WACS cable system,” TENET/NREN a research-tech group in South Africa said. “SAT-3 will be attended to thereafter. This information may be subject to change.”
The 16,000-kilometer system runs from South Africa to the UK, connecting much of western and central Africa to Europe and each other. A second WACS break near the UK likely won’t be fixed until late January, TENET/NREN said, with complete system repairs expected in early February.
A fault was found on the SAT-3 submarine cables which broke down near Libreville, Gabon, while the first fault on the WACS was found off the coast of Congo.
In the meantime, while the two cables are out, MainOne cable is providing backup service for customers who are affected.
