Major submarine cable outage hit business hard

Ben Uzor Jr

Businesses in Lagos, mainly financial institutions, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), in the past few days have continued to count their loses as unstable internet connectivity plague their operations. This is coming at a time when businesses in the country are fast growing with hundreds of entrepreneurs and organisations directly depending on the internet for survival. BusinessDay checks reveal that the disruption of internet supply was caused by submarine cable cut suffered by two of Nigeria’s major internet gateways. The incident occurred on July 8, 2012 in the Atlantic Ocean, 9 kilometres off the Nigeria’s coastline. Repairs on this particular cable are estimated to take about 16 days (from July 8). 

The poor internet service was further aggravated by service disruption on the South Atlantic 3 (SAT-3) service, provided by the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and offered to end users by 21st Century Technologies. Conglomerates including Total, Chevron, ExxonMobil, all the banks and several blue chip companies including telecommunications giants, MTN, Airtel, Direct on PC, a broadband internet service provider, Multi-Links and a few others use SAT-3 link. Some internet service providers (ISPs) have since routed to other sources of international wholesale bandwidth providers. They have continued to provide services but the service levels are low.

They have, however, mentioned that at certain times of the day internet download speed may not be as fast as customers might want it. With an estimated investment of about N365 billion ($2.24 billion) in underwater cables in the country over the past five years, Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of this investment and are starved of access to reliable and affordable broadband services. Currently, there are over 7.78 terabyte of internet capacity lying untapped at the shores of the country, yet internet penetration in the country remains abysmally low. Besides, Nigerians have continued to express dissatisfaction with the quality of service delivery, further calling on the telecoms regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), to take swift actions against erring telcos and internet providers.

“I subscribed to Swift Networks and since early June my network has been down. I stay around Amuwo-Odofin, Festac area. I cannot access the internet. It has been a really terrible experience”, Samson Ayo, an internet user told BenUzorreports in an interview. “I use iPNx and my internet service has been down for weeks now. I am app developer and need the internet for the kind of work I do. It has been difficult for me”, Deji Arimoro, an internet user told BenUzorreports. Poor services have also extended to BlackBerry subscribers who have complained about the slow access to the cyberspace. In recent times, mobile network operators (MNOs) have said damage to their fibre infrastructure in Nigeria is impacting negatively on their ability to deliver quality service. In an SMS (Short Messaging Service) sent out to its customers recently, Airtel apologised to its teeming subscribers for poor network services.

In an advertorial recently, MTN had informed its esteemed customers that it had embarked on a comprehensive network modernisation and swap-out exercise which is expected to cover its extensive network across the country. The company appealed to customers who may experience temporary service difficulties.