Cable cut: Services successfully restored, says MTN

Following subsea cable disruptions on Thursday, Bayobab Group, a subsidiary of MTN Group, has announced the successful restoration of its operations.

The telecom operator disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday.

MTN said that despite the challenges presented by the cable disruptions, its subsidiary demonstrated its capabilities by swiftly recovering over 3 Terabits per second (Tbps) of capacity across its footprint.

Through efficient rerouting of traffic and the activation of new cables, the company has bolstered its network resilience, ensuring the continuity of services for its customers, the operator stated.

The statement reads, “As of March 19, 2024, Bayobab Group, a subsidiary of MTN Group, has successfully restored its operations, recovering over 3 Terabits per second (Tbps) of capacity across our footprint.

“Although the recent subsea cable disruptions on 14 March 2024 presented challenges, we have demonstrated our capabilities to maintain a resilient network and efficiently reroute traffic.

“Throughout this challenging period, we prioritised the restoration of services by swiftly activating new cables to increase inter-connectivity and establish alternative routes, thereby bolstering our network resilience.

“This approach solidifies our commitment to prioritising network reliability and our dedication to connecting Africa and our customers as quickly as possible, marking the final stretch toward connecting all our valued customers.

“Bayobab’s ecosystem facilitates secure and scalable global traffic within Africa and the rest of the world serving 19 MTN markets, third-party Mobile Network Operators, Technology corporations and other Telecoms Service Providers,” the company stated.

Last Thursday, cuts to the undersea cable supplying broadband Internet connectivity to Nigeria and countries in the West African sub-region forced many banks, financial institutions, telecom companies, and allied firms to scale down their operations.

The cable companies affected include the West African Cable System and African Coast to Europe on the West Coast route from Europe, both of which have experienced faults. Additionally, SAT3 and MainOne have reported downtime due to the cable cut.

Over the weekend, the telcos, banks, and other financial institutions rerouted their traffic to alternative service providers in a move to mitigate the impact of the disruption.

On Monday, the Nigerian Communications Commission announced earlier in a statement that services had been restored to approximately 90 per cent of their peak utilisation capacities.

The statement reads, “Following the disruption on March 14, 2024, which affected data and voice services due to cuts in undersea fibre optics along the coasts of Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, we are pleased to announce that services have now been restored to approximately 90 per cent of their peak utilization capacities.”

Earlier, the Chairman of Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria, Gbenga Adebayo, had told The According that services would be fully stored today.

The chairman said, “From the progress we have seen, services will be restored completely tomorrow. We are almost there. There are many submarine cables routed to Nigeria. Some are routed through the Ivory Coast and Senegal.

Others are routed in other directions. So, that incident was an incident affecting that particular route.

“The other operators not following that route were not affected. So, they improvised an alternate route. It could have also been the other way, with other people routing their traffic the other way. It’s actually a common thing in network planning.”