NCC Confirms Repair Works Ongoing for Damaged Undersea Cables, Restoring Internet Services in Nigeria and Other West African Countries

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has confirmed that repair works are ongoing on the damaged undersea cables that resulted in internet service disruptions across West African countries, including Nigeria.

The disruption, which occurred on Thursday, was caused by damage to at least three subsea cables in the region.

The affected cables include the West Africa Cable System (WACS), MainOne, and the African Coast to Europe (ACE) sea cables, which are essential arteries for telecommunications data.

The incident led to outages and connectivity issues for mobile operators and internet service providers in the region.

MainOne has reported that an “external incident” resulted in a cut to its cable system in the Atlantic Ocean, offshore Cote D’Ivoire along the coast of West Africa.

The company has ruled out human activity as a cause and is currently retrieving the cable to gather more data and begin the repair process.

The incident has had a significant impact on data and fixed telecom services in several countries in West Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Côte D’Ivoire, and others.

However, the NCC has assured users that operators of the damaged cables have started repairs and that internet services are gradually being restored.

In addition to the damaged cables in the West Coast route from Europe, similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, such as Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), have also experienced cuts.

As the repair works continue, internet access and speed in Nigeria and other affected West African countries are expected to improve, and users should experience a gradual return to normal service.