*MainOne Declares Force Majeure, Explains Steps For Restoration
MAINONE, a digital infrastructure service provider has declared a force majeure and explained steps being taken to restore Internet connection to service providers following a cut in its undersea cable.
MainOne said in a statement on its website that it became necessary to declare a force majeure subsequent to testing of its cable system, adding that data from the preliminary assessment of the cable system indicated some underwater activity was the likely cause of disruptions to the system.
It stated that commercial contracts typically included such a force majeure clause, which enabled service providers to suspend contractual obligations for the duration of such disruptions.
A force majeure is an unforeseeable circumstance that prevents someone from fulfilling a contract. The unforeseen circumstances maybe natural disasters (fire, storms, floods, etc), governmental or societal actions (war, invasion, civil unrest, labour strikes, etc) or infrastructure failures (transportation, energy, etc).
Telecommunications companies and banks in Nigeria were on Thursday, march 14, hit by an Internet outage as a result of damage to international undersea cables supplying them connectivity.
According to the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), the damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire and caused downtime across West and South African countries.
The NCC said the cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption as far as in Portugal, adding that cable companies- West African Cable System (WACS) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) in the West Coast route from Europe- had experienced faults, while SAT3 and MainOne had downtime.
The regulatory body stated that similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG) and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), were said to have been cut at some point around the Red Sea.
This, it explained, resulted in degradation of services across these routes.
MainOne, on its part assured that it was working to restore services to as many of its customers as possible and to complete the repairs to the cable system in record time.
“We believe it is important to inform our customers of the fault details given the magnitude of the situation to set expectations and make contingency arrangements while the repairs are ongoing.
“We experienced a fault on the MainOne network, preliminary findings and further investigations revealed that the fault occurred due to an external incident.
“That external incident resulted in a cut on our submarine cable system in the Atlantic Ocean offshore Cote D’Ivoire, along the coast of West Africa.
“However, we have a maintenance agreement with Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA) to provide repair services for the submarine cable,” the statement said.
The company listed steps taken to include first identifying and assigning a vessel to retrieve the necessary spares required for repair and then sailing to the fault location to conduct the repair work.
It said the next step to complete the repair involved the affected section of the submarine cable being pulled from the seabed onto the ship where it would be spliced by skilled technicians.
MainOne explained that post-repair joints would be inspected and tested for any defects before the submarine cable is lowered back to the seabed and guided to a good position.
According to the statement, the repair process may take one week to two weeks and about two weeks to three weeks transit time for the vessel to pick up the spares and travel from Europe to West Africa, once the vessel is mobilised.
The statement further explained that most submarine cable faults occur as a result of human activities, such as fishing, anchoring in shallow waters near the shore or natural hazards, such as earthquakes, landslides and equipment failure.
It said that given the distance from land, and the cable depth of about three kilometres at the point of fault, any kind of human activity- ship anchors, fishing, drilling, among others, had been ruled out, adding that preliminary analysis suggested that some form of seismic activity on the seabed resulted in a break to the cable, but more data would be obtained after the cable’s retrieval during the repair exercise.
The service provider noted that the cable cut was not likely to be intentional, given the location and depth of the cable, adding that as indicated earlier.
MainOne said that it was working with ACMA to deploy the vessel and was unable to provide more information at this time, noting that the cable cut had disrupted international services on its cable south of the landing in Senegal, resulting in the outage of Internet services for majority of its customers.
“We recognise the impact of the outage and are working tirelessly to make available restoration capacity for temporal relief where feasible.
“We have some pre-configured restoration capacity on other cable systems, unfortunately those cable systems are also down currently.
“We have since acquired capacity on available cable systems, but we have not found readily available capacity to fully restore services to all our customers,” it stated.
The statement added that it had some restoration agreements with other operators to mitigate service disruptions, but unfortunately, those cable systems were also impacted by outages at this time, stating: “It is believed that MainOne submarine cable carries a significant portion of the international traffic into West Africa and provides services to multiple countries hence the magnitude of the impact.
“We are actively restoring services to the extent possible and mobilising a vessel for repairs and will update once there are more details.”
The statement added that its cables are very well protected, as could be seen from the number of incidences on its cable system since inception in 2010.
It said MainOne has taken a lead in West Africa in championing the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) and organising submarine cable owners associations in Nigeria and Ghana and its activities were to promote awareness of the strategic benefits of submarine cables and proactive regulations and measures to minimise submarine cable damage.
“We are very optimistic that our cable will be repaired, as planned, and services fully restored, so that we can continue to operate with continued integrity of the submarine cable,” it said.
A widespread Internet outage affected several countries across Africa, causing major disruptions to online services and communication for millions of users, especially in South Africa, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso.
While services have since been largely restored in Liberia and South Africa, the cause of the disruptions remains unclear, leaving frustrated customers seeking answers in the other countries affected.
The impact of the Internet blackout has been profound, particularly for those reliant on online connectivity for their livelihoods, with individuals and businesses across affected nations facing significant challenges, ranging from communication difficulties to disruptions in online transactions and business operations.
Internet connectivity plummeted to alarming lows in some regions.
