Internet Blackout Causes Stir in Ghana

The entire country was plunged into an internet blackout yesterday, causing huge stir in Ghana, especially among enterprises that rely heavily on internet to be productive.

In what began as a normal internet fluctuation, compelling users to refresh their internet devices severally, reports went viral with the speed of light, announcing that internet services were down.

Almost all the telecommunications networks in Ghana were affected, and reports suggest even neighboring Nigeria, South Africa, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire, also suffered the internet blackout.

A statement issued by the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications on Thursday, March 14, 2024 reported a significant disruption in the telecommunications sector.

According to the press release, multiple submarine fibre optics cables that provide internet connectivity to the country had experienced outages.

The statement said some of these cables were completely down, while others were only delivering limited capacity.

“This is impacting internet, data and Voice over IP (VoIP) services of the members of the Chamber; the Mobile Network Operators and the Data Service Providers to varying degrees. As a result, customers and subscribers are currently experiencing service challenges,” it stated.

However, the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications apologised to customers and said investigations were being carried out, as well as work to resolve the current problems to restore service to customers.

TELECEL

This development appears to be a baptism of fire for Telecel, few days after taking over officially from Vodafone Ghana.

In the early hours of Thursday, the company sent a bulk text message to its customers, informing them of the challenge, whilst apologising for any inconvenience caused.

The text message said: “Dear customer, we are currently experiencing challenges with our data services on mobile and fixed network. Our engineers are working to restore services as soon as possible. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.”
MTN

MTN Ghana also issued an apology to its customers for the disruption in accessing data services and reaching their call centre.

According to the company, it is due to an issue with their international undersea cables, resulting in significant challenges for Subscribers who rely on MTN’s services for their daily communication and internet needs.

MTN said its technical teams were working with their international partners to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

In their statement, MTN said: “We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience and will keep Subscribers updated. Thank you.”

NIGERIA

At the time of going to press last night, channelstv.com in Nigeria had reported that damage to at least three subsea cables off the West Coast of Africa on Thursday disrupted internet services in Nigeria, Ghana and other countries across the continent.

The report said telecommunications subscribers and bank users were stranded for hours as the disruption paralysed digital transactions and internet communication

It referred to one of the world’s leading financial news organisations, Bloomberg, as saying that the West Africa Cable System, MainOne and ACE sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected on Thursday.

Channelstv.com said according to data from internet analysis firms including NetBlocks, Kentik and Cloudflare, the cut triggered outages and connectivity issues for mobile operators and internet service providers across the West African sub-region.

They further reported that the cause of the cable faults had not yet been determined as of their press time and the main actors had not released any official communication.

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