NCA Engages Submarine Providers to Restore Data Services Amid Undersea Cable Disruptions
The National Communications Authority (NCA) says it is working with stakeholders to ensure the restoration of mobile network services across the country.
The Authority had previously alerted the public about multiple undersea cable disruptions that had adversely impacted mobile and fixed data services nationwide.
Disruptions to undersea cables responsible for international traffic occurred in Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, and Portugal, leading to a significant degradation of data services across the country.
The National Communications Authority (NCA) highlighted the impact on data services and noted that Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) had redundancies on other cables.
These operators were actively working to restore full services, despite the challenges posed by the cable disruptions.
On Thursday, Kofi Ntim Yeboah-Kordieh, a Manager at the Regulatory Administrations Division of the NCA, disclosed that the Authority had initiated discussions with all submarine cable providers. These providers were actively investigating the situation and exploring rerouting options to facilitate service restoration.
Although he could not provide a specific timeline for when the problem would be resolved, he expressed optimism that services would be restored soon.
“The submarine cables that bring the mobile networks connectivity have been impacted. So we have all our IT submarine cables down. There is some cuts between Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal. It affected all of them so we are not getting service.
“Some of them are trying to reroute through different countries to get some internet connectivity for us. So it’s a major challenge and it has affected all our MNOs. So we have four active submarine cables connecting to Ghana now which is giving us services. Three of the cables have lost 90% of internet connectivity traffic. And the last is totally down.
“…We have engaged all the submarine providers. There were some outages between Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire so we have investigated that and they are still investigating to understand what the problem is. Other countries are also affected.
“We are focusing on restoring service for now that is the most important thing then we can do an assessment later. I am sure within the shortest possible time we should be able to provide some answer and also hopefully, we will restore services,” he stated.
STORY BY ;PORTIA AKU SHIKA GAFAH
