Abuja, Nigeria –
More than a dozen countries across Africa suffered widespread internet outages on Thursday, network operators and internet watchdogs said, with reports of failures in multiple undersea communications cables.
MTN Group, one of Africa’s largest network providers, said the ongoing disruption is the result of failures in several major submarine cables. “Our operations are actively working to reroute traffic through alternative network paths,” the South African company said in a statement.
Network failures due to cable damage have been occurring in Africa in recent years. But “today’s disruption is indicative of something bigger, and this is one of the most serious,” said Isik Mehta, research director at NetBlocks, a group that documents internet disruptions around the world. Ta.
NetBlocks said data transmissions and measurements indicate major disruptions to international shipping “at or near the cable landing points of the submarine network.”
The cause of the failure was not immediately known.
In the worst-hit countries, such as Ivory Coast, the disruption was so severe that there were fears that vital services could be disrupted. Africa leads the world in his web traffic on mobile devices, and many of the continent’s businesses rely on the internet to serve their customers.
System cables that observers said were affected by Thursday’s outage included the West African Cable System (WACS), African Coast to Europe (ACE), SAT-3, and MainOne.
Internet analytics firm Cloudflare reported a pattern in the timing of the disruptions that significantly affected at least 10 countries in West Africa, including Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso.
South African mobile operator Vodacom also reported “intermittent connectivity issues due to multiple submarine cable failures.” Namibia and Lesotho were also affected.
NetBlocks’ Mehta said the impact of such cable failures could be exacerbated as networks try to avoid damage, reducing capacity available to other countries.
“While the initial disruption may be a physical disconnection, subsequent issues may be of a technical nature,” Mehta said.
