[UPDATE] Internet outage: Subsea cable repairs to take eight weeks — MainOne

MainOne, a Digital Infrastructure Service Provider, has revealed that repairing the recently damaged subsea cables that disrupted Internet connectivity in Nigeria and some other West African countries will take up to eight weeks.

Recall that there was an internet outage on multiple network services on March 14, disrupting access to internet across major sectors of the country.

The affected undersea cables included the West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3.

This disruption had a negatively impacted data and fixed telecom services in several West African countries, notably Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire, extending as far as eastern and southern Africa.

On March 15, the company stated that repairing its undersea submarine cables might take one to two weeks.

However, in a statement released on Monday, MainOne said it has restored network access in the region, adding that due to the extent of the cable damage, the repair process would take longer than originally anticipated.

It reads: “MainOne has continued to demonstrate resilience and agility in the face of recent challenges, focused on delivering value to customers and enabling West Africa’s digital ecosystem.

“MainOne has restored services and enabled regional interconnection over the last one week to ensure stability in the digital ecosystem across the region.

“In addition, we are actively working with our maintenance partners, vessel owners and permitting authorities to expedite the repair of our submarine cable.

“We are very optimistic that our cable will be repaired as planned and services fully restored, so that we can continue to operate with continued integrity of the submarine cable.

“The repair vessel has already been loaded with required spares for the cable repair. Timelines for cable repairs are estimated at 6 to 8 weeks, given the number of cables damaged in this incident.”