MainOne, a digital infrastructure service provider in West Africa, has revealed that it will be a while before full and regular Internet services are restored in Nigeria and other countries in the region.
This is due to the need to repair undersea submarine cables, which could take several weeks.
The disruption was caused by cuts to the cables in the Red Sea, allegedly carried out by houthis rebels.
The incident has severely impacted internet traffic in many parts of the continent, leading to disruptions in services provided by financial institutions and telecommunications companies in Nigeria.
MainOne stated in a statement on Friday that it may take an additional two to three weeks for a vessel to pick up the spare cables from Europe and travel to West Africa for repairs.
Speaking on the cause of the network outage, MainOne said preliminary findings and further investigations showed “the fault occurred due to an external incident that resulted in a cut on its submarine cable system, in the Atlantic Ocean offshore Cote D’Ivoire, along the coast of West Africa”.
“We have a maintenance agreement with Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) to provide repair services for the submarine cable,” the company said.
“First 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, in order 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.”
According to MainOne, after repair, joints will be inspected and tested for any defects and subsequently, the submarine cable will be lowered back to the seabed and placed in a good position.
“This process might take 1-2 weeks for repairs while about 2-3 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,” MainOne said.
In another update on Friday, the company said it is working with cable systems not affected by the incident or previous outages to secure restoration capacity.
MainOne said its technical team is working relentlessly to restore services, subject to availability of capacity and service configuration specifics.
“We will also provide incremental updates on the root cause and efforts to repair the submarine cable as soon as those details become available,” the company said
