The internet outage which hit Nigeria and some other African countries may persist for up to five weeks, according to the latest reports.

In an update yesterday, one of the undersea cable companies affected by the service disruptions, MainOne, said that the situation might persist for two to three weeks for the problem to be fixed.

It explained that investigations revealed that the fault came from an external incident that resulted in a cut on the submarine cable system in the ocean.

MainOne said the rectification of the fault, retrieving necessary spares required for repair, “sailing to the fault location for the repair work might take one to two weeks, while about two to three weeks of transit time may be required for the vessel to pick up the spares and travel from Europe to West Africa once the vessel is mobilised”.Massive internet outages have been reported in Nigeria following damage to international undersea cables supplying connectivity.

Telecommunications companies and a number of banks which rely on the affected cables for internet services have been affected by the outage. According to reports, the damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and has led to internet downtime across West and South African countries. The undersea cables affected are the West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3.

However, Glo 1, owned by Nigeria’s leading digital services company, Globacom, was not affected by the damage and has continued to operate normally. Data users, internet service providers and financial institutions which run on Glo 1 have continued to operate normally.

Industry analysts believe the ‘sturdy’ nature and resilience of Glo 1 International Submarine Cable is the reason the damage did not affect the cable.