• 90% of data traffic via submarine cables affected
• 13 African countries, Internet download speed drops significantly
• Banks, telcos count losses as failed payments spike
• Companies explore satellite operations to sustain operations
Individuals and businesses who are battling snail-speed or completely unavailable Internet may have to bear with the crisis for much more time than expected as the full restoration of services is not feasible until towards the end of April.
The service providers would require a minimum of five weeks to pull the damaged cables out of the sea beds, repair and fix them.
The Internet outage, which resulted from multiple fibre cuts in four subsea cables, including MainOne, West African Cable System (WACS), African Coast to Europe (ACE) and South Atlantic Telecommunications 3 (SAT3), has been described as a major crisis.
Local businesses and financial transactions have been constrained by the slow Internet. At the weekend, millions of Nigerians who had financial transactions to execute could not do much as most bank apps were not accessible.
For a few that were functional, transfer turnaround time has increased significantly with some banks placing caveats that completion time could not be guaranteed.
Payment points at gas stations and supermarkets, at the weekend, were crowded by shoppers who were struggling to make payments.
Thousands have taken to social media to rue the pains they have gone through in the past few days owing to the sluggish Internet that has affected every aspect of their lives, including payment.
The downtime has, for the umpteenth, tested the reliance on the Internet for shopping and payment. Failed transactions have spiked, in reminisces of the naira redesign experience of last year.
The banks, who appeared least prepared for the challenge, have vaguely advised customers to use alternative platforms for transactions. Responses to complaints of failed transactions seem to be slow and frustrating, suggesting the banks would be crowded from tomorrow.
The impact of the outage has been felt deeply and has almost paralysed business activities in about 12 other countries besides Nigeria, including Ghana, Liberia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger, Guinea, Gambia and South Africa.
To confirm the extent of the damages, today, 90 per cent of data traffic is carried via submarine cables. Africa is reported to have about 600 million Internet users with Nigeria having over 152 million.
Thepodium also gathered that some businesses have switched to satellite service, especially costly Starlink, which means a higher cost of operations for many businesses.
Indeed, the damage to the subsea cables added to the slowdown caused by the severing of three cables in the Red Sea last month. That earlier event has been widely attributed to an anchor dragged by stricken Bulker Rubymar, which drifted for weeks after taking a hit from a Houthi anti-ship missile.
For the current hitches, several engineers have been deployed by subsea cables affected to restore services, while individuals and businesses are at the receiving end, finding it extremely difficult to carry out anything online.
Some of the affected operators, especially those servicing the West Coast region, have switched partially to Glo1 – the only subsea cable not affected by the damage thus far.
Indeed, individuals and businesses have been expressing their frustrations, with some banks in Nigeria scaling down operations as much as they can, as major channels, including their applications (mobile app), Internet banking and automated teller machines (ATMs) have been challenged due to the hitches, leaving several transactions seriously hanging.
Zenith Bank, at the weekend, sent messages to its customers on the hitches, informed that it is currently working with its Internet service provider to reroute its traffic through alternative routers.
Zenith Bank said: “Please be informed that we are experiencing service disruptions due to internet outage as a result of the submarine communication cable cut that is affecting countries along the West African coast.
“You may therefore experience some challenges performing transactions with our Internet Banking Platform and Mobile Banking App. We are currently working with our internet service providers to reroute traffic through alternative routes and resolve the situation as soon as possible.”
While apologizing for the service disruptions, FCMB said: “We understand that you are still experiencing service unavailability on *329#, FCMB Mobile, Internet Banking (Personal & Business), and our Agent Banking platform (Interbank Transfers).
“The resolution of the technical issue from one of our network partners is still in progress. We are actively working hard with our partner to resolve this issue.
“In the meantime, our branches and alternative channels (FCMB ATMs & POS) are available for you to carry out your transactions. While partial services have been restored by MainOne, the company in an update, at the weekend, said: “We have restored services to some customers and actively working on restoring services to others via capacity acquired on available cable systems. The estimated repair time is for our submarine cable fault to be fixed, to enable our services to become fully restored and independently supply capacity to our customers.”
Due to the impact of the damage, MainOne had earlier declared a force majeure. The company also hinted that while actions have started towards the repair of the damage, the process might take weeks to complete.
According to a statement issued by the company, its preliminary investigations suggested that some form of seismic activity on the seabed resulted in a break to the cable. It, however, said more data would be obtained when the cable is retrieved during the repair exercise.
MainOne said it declared a force majeure event after it tested the cable system and when it had enough technical data from the preliminary assessment to indicate some underwater activity was the likely cause.
“We believe it is important to inform our customers of the fault details given the magnitude of the situation to set expectations and make contingency arrangements while the repairs are ongoing,” the company stated.
The cable company said it has a maintenance agreement with the Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) to provide repair services for the submarine cable. Explaining the repair process, it said they will first need to identify and assign a vessel, the vessel has to retrieve the necessary spares required for repair and then sail to the fault location to conduct the repair work.
“Next, to complete the repair, the affected section of the submarine cable will have to be pulled from the seabed onto the ship where it will be spliced by skilled technicians.
“Post repair, joints will be inspected and tested for any defects and then the submarine cable is lowered back to the seabed and guided to a good position.
“This process might take one to two weeks for repairs while about two to three weeks of transit time may be required for the vessel to pick up the spares and travel from Europe to West Africa once the vessel is mobilised,” the company explained.
On better ways to protect the submarine cables to prevent frequent outages, MainOne claimed that its cable is very well protected as can be seen from the number of incidents on “our cable system since inception in 2010. We have taken a lead in West Africa in championing the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) and organising submarine cable owners associations in Nigeria and Ghana, which promote awareness of the strategic benefits of submarine cables and proactive regulations and measures to minimise submarine cable damage.”
Providing more insight into the crisis, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said service disruption was caused by a combination of cable cuts, resulting in equipment faults on the major undersea cables along the West African Coast.
“The cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.
“Cable companies – West African Cable System (WACS) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) in the West Coast route from Europe have experienced faults while SAT3 and MainOne have downtime,” it stated.
According to the Commission, in a statement, signed by its Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Mouka, similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), are said to have been cut at some point around the Red Sea, resulting in degradation of services across on these routes.
The Commission, however, noted that the cable operators had promised to work round the clock to ensure that services are restored to the affected countries within the shortest possible time. Speaking on Arise TV at the weekend, the Partner and Head, Tech Assurance for KPMG, West Africa, Lawrence Amadi, claimed nobody knows the exact cause of the damage to the submarine cables, but that affected operators have switched to backups to bridge the gap.
Amadi said the cost implications to business in the affected region would be huge, stressing that 90 per cent of data traffic comes via submarine cable systems.
Stressing that other sectors of the economy are feeling the impact because of the significance of the telecoms industry, the KPMG chief said Nigeria needed to enhance the technologies around the undersea cables and also enhance data protection locally, which can be through outsourcing.
According to him, the recent damage showed that the about 1.3 million km submarine cable system under the sea globally is vulnerable to damage and activities of those who explored the oceans, stressing that there is a need to keep the seaways safer.
Developing the sub-sector, Amadi, who called for increased public, and private partnerships between governments and the operators, said this would ensure additional routes are freed.
Calling for local hosting of data, the Partner and Head, Tech Assurance for KPMG, West Africa, said: “Servers abroad will be impacted but local data centres and hosting can help to bridge the gap.”
