After last week’s news that Seacom had switched on their high speed internet cable, bringing internet to East Africa, it looked like a bright and fast future for the continent. However, a cable fault on another line has today brought much of West Africa’s online usage to a standstill.

The faulty cable, which is owned by Suburban Telecom and runs from Spain and Portugal, passing West Africa and on to South Africa, has left much of Benin, Niger, Nigeria and Togo in the dark and offline. Nigeria in particular has been badly hit, losing 70per cent of its bandwidth which has had a knock on effect on their banking, mobile phone and governmental sectors.

Explaining the huge problem, Suburban Telecom’s chief marketing officer Ladi Okuneye said “SAT-3 (the cable involved) is currently the only fibre optic cable serving West Africa. So all West African countries have to use it.”

The fault in the cable is thought to be in the Benin area, bring problems to Nigeria as most of the country’s bandwidth is passed through Benin. “The rest of the system is unaffected by this fault” a representative from Telkom South Africa said, confirming that the fault seemed to be only in one place.

Whilst Benin has been able to reroute some of its broadband through neighbouring countries, and Nigeria struggles to continue with its remaining 30per cent, Niger and Togo are offline. Many companies are resorting to other communication methods, such as satellite links, to remain operational.

Tagged as: Cable, Internet, Offline