Ghana, along with several West and Central African countries, is bracing for at least five weeks of internet and telecommunications disruptions. This comes after significant damage to subsea cables, which are crucial for connectivity, was reported. Ghana’s National Communications Authority (NCA) confirmed the expected duration for the repairs, highlighting the profound impact on various sectors including banking, mobile phone services, and financial transactions.
The authority recently convened with representatives from the four main subsea cable landing service providers: Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), Equinix-owned MainOne, South Atlantic 3 (SAT-3), and the West Africa Cable System (WACS). These discussions aimed to assess the extent of the damage and coordinate efforts for a swift resolution. According to the NCA, the service providers have successfully pinpointed the damage’s approximate location and are preparing to deploy repair vessels to the affected areas.
The disruption’s root cause has sparked interest and concern, with MainOne revealing that preliminary analyses point towards seismic activities on the seabed as the likely culprit behind the cable damage. This revelation underscores the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to natural phenomena and the need for robust contingency planning. The ongoing internet outages have had a ripple effect across the region, severely impacting businesses and services that rely on internet connectivity. Financial institutions, mobile phone operators, and money transfer agencies are among the hardest hit, with operational challenges that affect both service delivery and customer transactions. The stock exchange markets, which depend on real-time data exchange, are also experiencing unprecedented disruptions.
As the affected nations await the restoration of full services, the incident highlights the critical importance of subsea cables in global communications infrastructure. These cables, lying deep on the ocean floor, are the lifelines of internet connectivity, facilitating the vast majority of international data transfer and communication. The estimated five-week repair timeframe underscores the complexity and challenges of undertaking deep-sea operations. Repairing subsea cables involves specialized vessels and technology, capable of locating and fixing breaks in these crucial conduits of connectivity. The process is not only time-consuming but also requires precise coordination among multiple stakeholders, including cable owners, service providers, and international repair consortia.
This incident serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of our interconnected world, where physical infrastructure underpins the digital economy. It also brings to light the need for continuous investment in infrastructure resilience and redundancy to safeguard against future disruptions. As the repair efforts get underway, the focus will not only be on restoring connectivity but also on evaluating and enhancing the robustness of subsea cable networks.
