INTERNET outages plaguing West and Central Africa are set to continue for at least five weeks as repairs on damaged subsea cables proceed, Ghana’s communications regulator revealed on Saturday.
The disruption, stemming from a break in the cables, has led to widespread disturbances in internet and telecommunications-linked businesses across the region. Impacted sectors include banks, mobile phone operations, money transfer agencies, and stock exchange markets.
Ghana’s National Communications Authority disclosed that it convened a meeting with the four subsea cable landing service providers – Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne (owned by data centre operator Equinix), South Atlantic 3 (SAT-3), and the West Africa Cable System (WACS) – along with mobile network operators.
During the meeting, the service providers pinpointed the approximate location of the damage and prepared to dispatch repair vessels to the affected areas.
‘The cable landing service providers have indicated an estimated time frame of a minimum of five weeks for full service restoration from the time the vessels are dispatched to the various locations,’ stated the regulator.
MainOne, in a statement on Friday, suggested that preliminary analysis pointed to seismic activity on the seabed as the cause of the cable break.
The extensive downtime underscores the vulnerability of subsea cable infrastructure and the significant impact such disruptions can have on regional connectivity and economic activities.
