Customers of MTN Nigeria are now experiencing issues using their data and placing calls as a result of an extended outage on the company’s network.
Nonetheless, the telecom company claims that several fibre cuts are to blame for the network outage and that its staff is putting in a lot of effort to get things back to normal reported by NewsCentral Africa.
This occured on the same day that telecom providers were supposed to stop blocking any connections that aren’t associated with a National Identity Number by the Nigerian Communications Commission.
Many of the customers who had been unable to use their lines to make or receive calls started to wonder whether their lines had been prohibited by the network operator as the deadline drew near.
MTN described the service interruption in a statement it published in relation to its support personnel on X:
“Dear Customer, a significant service outage resulting from several fibre cuts that affects phone and data services has been causing you to have trouble connecting to the network.
“Our engineers are putting in a lot of effort to fix this, and services are being gradually restored in certain areas. We sincerely apologies for the inconvenience and we request your tolerance and patience as the team works to quickly restore full service.”
MTN stated that the service interruption hit every part of the nation in a different message that was issued individually to a subset of its consumers. The issue started about 1:39 PM on Wednesday, February 28.
Fibre cuts have played a significant role in Nigeria’s persistently subpar telecommunications infrastructure. While deliberate vandalism might also cause this, road construction is the most frequent cause.
The Nigerian telecom sector paid N14 billion to rectify no less than 59,000 fibre cuts that were reported between 2022 and 2023, according to information recently disclosed by the NCC.
The sector witnessed more than 35,000 fibre cuts in 2022 and more than 24,000 in 2023, according to the Commission’s findings.
The current outage of MTN services indicates a regulatory move that might ban many users from using any telecom services starting on February 29.
All Nigerian telecommunications companies, including MTN, Airtel, and Globacom, among others, are required to implement full network barring on any phone line for which subscribers have not yet submitted their national identification numbers by February 28, 2024, per a directive issued by the NCC in December of last year.
Furthermore, it will be strictly forbidden for individuals who submitted their NINs but had them not validated.
On or before March 29, 2024, NINs that have been filed but not validated will be prohibited if five or more lines are connected to the unconfirmed NIN.
Likewise, lines with less than five connections to an unconfirmed NIN will be prohibited by April 15, 2024, at the latest.
The order mandates the validation of all impacted subscribers using biometrics and biodata before their lines can be unbarred.
