The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has announced the restoration of voice and data services disrupted by undersea cable cuts.
Reuben Muoka, the Director of Public Affairs of the commission, confirmed this in a statement released on Monday.
Last Thursday, a widespread internet outage affected Nigerians, including telecommunication companies, banks, and media organizations, following damage to international undersea cables that supply connectivity.
Confirming the incident, the NCC said the damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and is causing downtime across West and South African countries
The commission said the cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.
It said that cable companies – West African Cable System (WACS) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) in the West Coast route from Europe – had experienced faults, while SAT3 and MainOne had downtime.
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The regulatory body added that similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), were said to have been cut at some point around the Red Sea.
This, it said, resulted in the degradation of services across these routes.
On Monday, Mr Muoka said that services were restored, following the disruption on 14 March, which affected data and voice services due to cuts in undersea fibre optics along the coasts of Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal.
“We are pleased to announce that services have now been restored to approximately 90 per cent of their peak utilization capacities,” he said.
He explained that all operators who were impacted by the cuts have taken recovery capacity from submarine cables which were not impacted by the cuts.
He added that mobile network operators have assured the commission that data and voice services would operate optimally pending full repairs of the undersea cables as they have managed to activate alternative connectivities to bring back the situation to normalcy.
“We extend our appreciation to telecom consumers for their patience and understanding during the downtime caused by the undersea fibre cuts,” he added.
