Internet users and ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) based business operators across the country may have to endure up to three more weeks of epileptic services, it was gathered last night.
The disruptions were sparked by a cut on the submarine cable system in the Atlantic Ocean offshore Cote D’Ivoire, along the coast of West Africa on Thursday, leaving many business transactions in hiccups.
Most affected are telecommunication firms, publishing companies, banks and cable companies.
One of the undersea cable companies affected by the service disruptions, MainOne, said yesterday that the situation might persist for two to three weeks for the problem to be fixed.
In a note shared with The Nation, the cable company said investigations revealed that the fault came from an external incident that resulted in a cut on the submarine cable system in the ocean.
MainOne, which has a maintenance agreement with Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) to provide repair services for the submarine cable, said the rectification of the fault involves identifying and assigning a vessel to “retrieve the necessary spares required for repair, and then sail to the fault location to conduct the repair work”.
The affected section of the submarine cable will subsequently “be pulled from the seabed onto the ship where it will be spliced by skilled technicians”.
It added: “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 one to two weeks for repairs while about two to three 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”.
On what could have specifically caused the outage, the company said most submarine cable faults result from human activities such as fishing and anchoring in shallow waters near shore, natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, and equipment failure.
It said: “Given the distance from land, and the cable depth of about three kms 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”.
It ruled out sabotage as a likely cause of the cut “given the location and cable depth”.
On the effects on its customers, it said: “International services on our cable south of the landing in Senegal have been disrupted. This has resulted in the outage of internet services for the majority of our customers.
“We recognise 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”.
“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 Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday that service providers were working round the clock to restore internet connectivity.
“Operators of these cables have commenced repairs already, and services are gradually being restored”, the NCC Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Muoka Director said.
“They have promised to work round the clock to ensure that services are restored to the affected countries within the shortest possible time.
“It is important to bring this information to the knowledge of corporate and individual consumers on these services”.
Many telephone and internet users as well as bank customers complained yesterday that the disruptions persisted.
Some of the banks advised their customers to use alternative channels with mobile app and internet banking services remaining not functioning well.
One of the banks, First City Monument Bank (FCMB), told its customers:
“We understand that you are still experiencing service unavailability on *329#, FCMB Mobile, Internet Banking (Personal & Business), and our Agent Banking platform (Interbank Transfers).
“The resolution of the technical issue from one of our network partners is still in progress. We are actively working hard with our partner to resolve this issue.
“In the meantime, our branches and alternative channels (FCMB ATMs & POS) are available for you to carry out your transactions”.
“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this has caused and will update you as soon as the channels become available for your use”.
