Subsea Cable Cuts in Red Sea Cause Internet Disruptions Across Africa

A number of large subsea cable cuts across the Red Sea on Thursday caused considerable service loss to several nations across Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.

The east coast of Africa to Europe submarine cable that has been damaged directly caused a number of regions to face internet outages.

The West Africa Submarine Cable and the African Coast to Europe alongside other interlinked cables were cut in the red sea.

This cut off many regions from the world wide web and the effects were faced by the banking, payment services, education, organizations and agent banking sectors.

Nigeria Communications Commission said regarding the incident that multiple cable cuts alongside equipment damage caused disruption to connections between African countries and Portugal. The issues started with Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal and scattered from there.

Progress on Repairs

Service providers have commenced repairing the mobile cables that got disturbed due to West African Cable System, African Coast to Europe, SAT3, and MainOne. However, it is anticipated that it can take up to several days for the repairs to finish, resulting in disruptions for clients located in the affected areas.

Telecom operators and Providers are actively working on switching the customers to other cables and backups while the repairs are ongoing. Nevertheless, because Nigeria had access to several submarine cables connecting to Europe and Asia, it is lessens the need for an additional single cable.

At the moment, investigations on the cutting of the submarine cables are ongoing with plausible hypotheses including underwater environmental conditions and active marine animals. 

After pushing to these new cables or temporary satellites, companies involved stated that they would work to restore regular services to their clients.

Telecommunications enterprises such as 9PSB and MTN have reached out to their clients regarding the disruption in service, detailing the situation and the plans going forward. 

The customers are recommended to remain calm while all the regions that have been affected are completely overhauled to deterministic internet service.