Businesses in the country that depend on the Internet crawled at snail speed for the better part of last week after Sat-3, Nigeria’s backbone internet infrastructure suffered major damage undersea at Lagos Bar Beach end.
Activities were down to as much as 30 per cent and companies are now counting their losses following their inability to transact businesses with the Internet, a global system of interconnected computer networks that interchange data by packet switching using the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP).
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations reveal that the submarine infrastructure was cut at the Bar beach end of the cable that run from Europe to Nigeria due to some operations at the beach side. This affected the ‘repeaters’ the equipment that picks signal for connectivity link outside the country and the consequent downtime experienced by ISPs, telcos, and internet users.
South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (Sat-3) is a submarine communications cable linking Portugal and Spain to South Africa, with connections to several West African countries including Nigeria along the route to the rest of the world. The backbone infrastructure is the major source of terrestrial bandwidth that enables service providers to deliver reliable internet service as well as voice traffic.
Mr. Mohammed Rudman, managing director, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria confirmed the development adding that service providers now use two links, Sat-3 and Very Small Aperture Terminal (Vsat) or secondary links. It is not confirmed as at press time if the damaged portion of the Sat-3 has been fixed.
The over reliance on Sat-3 and its effect each time the service is disrupted prompted Suburban Telecommunications, a private Nigerian carrier, to partner with Benin Telecom, the national operator of the Republic of Benin, for alternative to SAT-3 submarine cable capacity into Nigeria and other West African markets.
