SAT3 which provides internet service to Nigeria’s terrestrial provision has been damaged and this has disrupted business across Nigeria.
The SAT-3 cable links Nigeria with the rest of the world and is used by phone companies and internet service providers. MTN in a statement said, "We are experiencing some challenges with access to bandwidth which carries a very large portion of our international voice and data traffic out of the country.
“While the cause of the problem is still being investigated by our service provider, the immediate consequence is that our international traffic will be affected.”
Also, Suburban West Africa, a provider of internet services via SAT3 to businesses in Nigeria said, “While we have built redundancy on the terrestrial leg of our fibre optic network that delivers services to customers, there is vulnerability on the landing cable deployed into each country. Our network is currently routed into Nigeria through the Benin Republic, which is the landing station we are connected to. In the eight years the SAT3 service has been available, this is the first time there has been an outage on the Benin landing cable."
“There have been outages on the actual SAT3 submarine cable itself, but not the Benin landing cable. The SAT3 cable is built with redundancy, which is why there has been minimal downtime in other outages, but with this outage being on an isolated landing cable, we will have to wait for the SAT3 consortium to send one of their cable maintenance ships to Benin to fix the problem. This is expected to take approximately 10 days.”
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