Nigeria said internet and data services disrupted by an undersea cable cut last week have been restored.
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said that services have now been restored to approximately 90% of their peak utilisation capacities as of Monday evening.
“All operators who were impacted by the cuts have taken recovery capacity from submarine cables, which were not impacted by the cuts, and have thus recovered approximately 90% of their peak utilisation capacities,” NCC spokesman Reuben Muoka said in a statement.
Widespread internet outage hit the coasts of West Africa after an undersea cable cut near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire.
International internet and data service providers MainOne, West African Cable System (WACS), African Coast to Europe (ACE), and South Atlantic Telecommunications 3 (SAT3) were all impacted by the cable cut.
NCC said 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.
Beyond internet and data services, millions of businesses were impacted as banking and other financial services almost came to a halt. Mobile networks were also disrupted by the cable cut.
NCC explained that the MainOne submarine cable carries a significant portion of the international traffic into West Africa and provides services to multiple countries hence the magnitude of the impact.
MainOne said it has a maintenance agreement with the “Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) to provide repair services for the submarine cable.”
Muoka, however, assured mobile network operators that data and voice services would operate optimally pending full repairs of the undersea cables as they have managed to activate alternative connectivities to restore 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 said.