MainOne, an Equinix company leading in the West African data center and network connectivity provider has announced that network restoration may take up to five weeks before full restoration.
This follows the internet outage that hit Nigeria and other African countries in the last 72 hours, rendering connectivity a collapse of a wide-range network following damage to the International undersea cables supplying connectivity.
In a statement released on Thursday, March 14th, 2024, which provided an update on the submarine cable outage, MainOne expressed based on preliminary findings that it experienced a fault in its network undersea cable.
In further investigation, MainOne revealed a day after that an external incident had resulted in a cut in its submarine cable system in the Atlantic Ocean, between Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire, offshore the coast of West Africa, hence the reason for the internet outage.
Further Updates on Submarine Cable Outage – Force Majeure pic.twitter.com/9vVobYnY0V
— MainOne (an Equinix Company) (@Mainoneservice) March 15, 2024
However, to resolve the lack of network provision caused by the incident, MainOne mobilized a vessel to sail Europe back to West Africa for the supply of materials for the repair, which might take up to five weeks before full network restoration.
The outage has impacted telecommunications companies and several banks that rely on the affected cables to provide internet services. According to reports, the damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire, causing internet downtime in West and South African countries. The affected undersea cables include the West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3.
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