Faulty submarine cable repairs may last over one month- MainOne
By Innocent Raphael
A leading provider of submarine cable systems, MainOne, has said repair process for its damaged submarine cable may take up to five weeks.
MainOne disclosed this in a statement on Friday following a fault experienced on its network on Thursday, reassuring customers of its dedicated efforts to expedite the repair process and promptly restore network connectivity.
The technology firm also revealed that it had a maintenance agreement with the Atlantic cable maintenance and repair agreement to provide repair services for its submarine cable, adding that the procedure involves inspecting and testing the cable joints for defects, followed by lowering the cable back to the seabed and guiding it to an optimal position.
It further explained that the process, which includes mobilising a vessel to retrieve necessary parts from Europe and transit to West Africa, is estimated to take approximately five weeks to complete.
Preliminary investigations conducted by the company have attributed the technical issue to an external incident, resulting in a cut along the West African coast, offshore Cote D’Ivoire, and in the Atlantic Ocean.
Also reports have stated that most submarine cable faults occur as a result of human activities such as fishing and anchoring in shallow waters near shore, natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, and then equipment failure
In an effort to limit the damage control, MainOne stated that given the distance from land, and the cable depth of about 3 km at the point of fault, any kind of human activity – ship anchors, fishing, and drilling among others had been immediately ruled out.
Recall that the outage of network services had significant negative impacts, particularly on Nigerian banks, as MainOne serves as a prominent internet provider for some of them.
The disruption had left numerous major Nigerian banks offline, causing inconvenience to customers who were unable to access banking apps or utilise USSD services.
MainOne, asides providing support to commercial and microfinance institutions with connectivity and hybrid cloud solutions, also services major telecom operators, ISPs, government agencies, small to large enterprises, and educational institutions
