The Director General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Dr Joe Anokye, has mentioned that the cause of the undersea submarine cable disruption is yet to be known.
He said cable landing operators were close to reaching the cables to determine exactly what caused the disruption. At the briefing held on Saturday, March 16, 2024, at the NCA Tower, the Cable Landing Operators indicated that it would take a minimum of five weeks to repair the faults according to the Director General of NCA.
“Reports from the Operators indicate that the repair vessels are on their way to the problem areas in the high seas of Côte d’Ivoire,” he said.
Dr Anokye said this during a media briefing on the current state of internet connectivity in the country after March 14 nationwide internet blackout. He also said the internet situation was improving gradually.
Dr Anokye said the three major mobile network operators in Ghana – MTN, Telecel and AT were advised to connect to submarine cables in the subregion as a backup alongside the ones they were connected to in the country’s territory.
He said that would enable them to run their operations effectively anytime they were faced with undersea cable hitch by falling on other connections in the subregion.
Dr Anokye said the NCA as of last year 2023 had licensed a fifth cable landing operator, 2 Africa Cable , which would be in full operation in the first quarter of 2025.
He said the Cable was the only one that circled the entire African continent providing geographical diversity and was far away from the other cables in the high seas.
He added that they were also in the process of licensing broadband networks for domestic use to complement those provided by the network operators.
Dr Anokye said those interventions were being put in place by the Authority to ensure that data and internet services did not get disrupted anytime there was an undersea cable .
The briefing was moderated by the Minister for Information- Designate, Hon. Fatimatu Abubakar.