Many African countries face severe internet outages due to faulty undersea cables. MTN Group worked to reroute traffic and NetBlocks highlighted the severity. West Africa has been particularly affected. Cables such as WACS, ACE, SAT-3 and MainOne are affected.
Cable connected to internet router | Image source: Pexels
Main highlights
- Many African countries experienced severe internet outages on Thursday.
- Africa’s largest telecommunications company MTN Group works on rerouting internet traffic
- Cables such as WACS, ACE, SAT-3 and MainOne are affected.
New Delhi: Several African countries experienced severe internet outages on Thursday due to the failure of multiple undersea telecommunications cables, according to reports from network operators and internet monitoring groups.
MTN Group, Africa’s leading network provider, said in a statement: “To mitigate the impact on customers in affected countries, our operations are actively working to reroute traffic through alternative network paths and working with our alliance partners to expedite Repair speed handles damaged cables. Leveraging our strong and resilient network infrastructure, we aim to minimize service disruptions and stay connected.”
NetBlocks, which calls itself the “Internet Observatory,” said in a statement that “indicators show that telecommunications outages in West and Central Africa are continuing, with further connectivity drops in multiple countries throughout the day; the incident is attributed to impacts on WACS, MainOne, SAT3 and cable damage to the ACE submarine fiber optic network.” NetBlocks observed severe disruptions to international data transmissions, particularly near undersea cable landing sites.
The exact cause of the cable failure was not immediately determined, raising concerns about possible disruptions to essential services, especially in hard-hit countries such as Côte d’Ivoire. Africa leads global mobile device network traffic, highlighting the heavy reliance of many businesses on the internet to deliver services.
Affected submarine cables include the West African Cable System (WACS), African Coast to Europe (ACE), SAT-3 and MainOne. Internet monitoring group Cloudflare noted a clear pattern in the timing of outages, with severe impacts on West African countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso.
South Africa’s main mobile operator Vodacom reported connectivity issues due to multiple undersea cable failures. Countries such as Namibia and Lesotho have also experienced disruption.
The impact of such cable failures is compounded and could reduce available capacity in other countries as networks attempt to reroute traffic. While the initial cause may be physical damage to the cable, subsequent technical issues may exacerbate the situation.
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