The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said that the operators of damaged international undersea cables that have caused Internet service disruption in Nigeria and other countries, have begun repair works and are gradually restoring services.
The Commission disclosed this in a statement issued on Thursday night by its Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Muoka.
NCC said the cable operators have promised to work round the clock in ensuring services are restored to the affected countries as soon as possible, according to nairametrics.
NCC said, “A combination of cable cuts, resulting in equipment faults on the major undersea cables along the West African Coast, have negatively impacted data and fixed telecom services in several countries of West Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cote de Ivoire, among others.
“The cuts occurred somewhere in Cote de’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.
“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.”
Similarly, undersea cables that provides traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), are said to have been cut at some point around the Red Sea, resulting in degradation of services on these routes.
Apologising to its customers in a statement issued over their experience, MTN on Thursday, said, “We apologize for the challenges you may be experiencing with internet speed and accessing data services at the moment.
“This is as a result of damage to international undersea cables across East & West Africa. The repair process is ongoing to resolve the situation as soon as possible. Please look out for further updates.”
Sterling Bank is one of the banks affected by the cable damage as the bank’s network was completely shut down in the banking sector, and could not process any transactions. The bank’s app was also not working, thus shutting the customers out totally.
