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Update 7: Undersea cable disruptions affect data services

National Communications Authority NCA.png File photo

Fri, 24 May 2024 Source: National Communications Authority

The National Communications Authority (NCA) wishes to inform the general public of the successful completion of repair works on all four (4) subsea cables affected by the March 14 disruptions, which impacted mobile and fixed data services nationwide.

They have since been operational and providing service at full capacity since the completion of the repair works. The repair works were completed as follows:

i. SAT3: April 6, 2024

ii. ACE: April 17, 2024

iii. WACS: April 29, 2024

iv. MainOne: May 8, 2024.

According to the subsea cable service providers, all four cable faults were found at the crossing with a sub-sea canyon off the coast of Abidjan called Le Trou Sans Fond Canyon. The NCA has issued further directives to mobile and subsea cable service providers since the March 14 incident in a bid to strengthen its regulatory oversight. These directives include:

1. A requirement for all submarine cable operators to submit their backup and redundancy plans to ensure business continuity and seamless connectivity to data services should their cables get cut or develop a major fault.

2. All Mobile Network Operators are to maintain their existing redundant submarine cable links within Ghana and to connect to a submarine cable provider in the sub-region that is currently not landing in Ghana.

This concludes the updates and information the authority has been sharing on the undersea cable disruptions which occurred on March 14, 2024. The NCA is grateful for the interest, support, and understanding displayed by all stakeholders within the internet value chain; consumers, mobile network operators, and the sub-marine cable operators and terrestrial fiber operators (AT, MTN, Telecel, ACE, MainOne, WACS, SAT-3, and C-Squared, etc). You can be assured of our commitment to ensuring sustainable service delivery to all users within the industry.

Source: National Communications Authority