By Chinenye Anuforo
WIOCC, Africa’s digital backbone, in response to the cable cuts currently affecting the WACS, ACE, MainOne and SAT3 subsea systems on Africa’s western seaboard has disclosed that as at yesterday it has been able to bring up over two and a half terabytes of capacity and restored over 100 links.
Chris Wood, the Chief Executive Officer of the company, in an online meeting with select journalists, disclosed that over the last two weeks, the company has been busy restoring the networks of some of the other operators in the region. He said, “I think in the last four or five days, we have brought up over two and a half terabytes of capacity. We’ve restored over 100 links now. And we brought more people into our data center in Lagos through the Open Access Data Centres (OADC) which has connectivity directly into the Equiano system, which at the moment is the only major system still in operation serving the most of West Africa in particular Nigeria.”
He stated that WIOCC has just deployed over $100 million of capital in accessing new subsea systems and the Equiano system and a new one that’s about to go live later this year called 2Africa. He explained that when 2Africa comes in service, it will increase the resilience of everybody’s networks that uses it adding that bringing two cable landings into Nigeria, one in Akwa Ibom and one in Lagos will further strengthen Nigeria’s position and provide extra redundancy as well.
In terms of the repair times of the cable, Wood hinted that the ships have been mobilized. “They are probably going to be on station towards the end of the month in the next six or seven days. And then depending on the extent of the damage, it could take another two or three weeks to repair all of the cables. So, we’re thinking probably sometime in the middle of April, possibly towards the end of April to have all the cables repaired and that’s carried out by each cable consortium or owner rather than any individual carrier so we’re part of some of those consortiums and part of the process”, he explained.
According to him, it will cost a total of about $2 million to achieve full restoration to a single subsea cable, depending on the extent of the cut on the cable.
This brings it to a total of about $8 million to fix the affected four submarine cables that were affected by the cut.
Wood however said the owners of the affected cables would bear the cost of restoration of the individual subsea cables.
The affected cables include: MainOne Cable, West African Cable System (WACS), African Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable and SAT3 subsea cable systems. All four subsea cables came from Europe and they all have landing points at the coast of West African countries, including Nigeria.
Considering the effect of the cable cut, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has called for a coordinated and multilateral approach by the region to protect shared telecommunications infrastructure, and diversify connectivity to ensure uninterruptible connections.
Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Aminu Maida, made the submission in a statement delivered at the 21st West Africa Telecommunications Regulatory Assembly (WATRA) Annual General Meeting (AGM), which held in Freetown, Sierra Leone, from the 19th to 22nd March 2024.
Dr. Maida, whose message was delivered at the WATRA AGM by the Deputy Director, Public Affairs of the Commission, Nnenna Ukoha, stated that the recent submarine cable cuts that resulted in nationwide outages on multiple networks in 12 African countries has raised the urgent need for the sub-region to establish a mechanism to protect itself from damage to submarine infrastructure and its attendant impact on the sub-region.
Reacting to NCC’s statement, Wood said subsea cables all over the world could get cut for various reasons, which could be as a result landslides, propeller from ships among other reasons.
“What Nigeria and other West African countries need are more cables landing at the shores of the country that will lead to huge redundancy. The idea of physical security may not work because the cables are laid on the bed of the sea and no one can see exactly their locations to warrant physical protection. So having more cables is the best security measure and not physical security,” Wood said. Although Wood said it would cost about $1 billion to berth a subsea cable from Europe to West Africa, he however insisted that multiple cable system remained the best form to address cable cuts that occur all over the world.
He said WIOOC was established 15 years ago to provide backbone services to organisations and their networks across West Africa.