The Nigerian Communications Commission, -NCC, has announced that 90 percent of voice and data services have been restored in Nigeria after disruptions m by the undersea cable cuts had frustrated Nigerians over the weekend.
Reuben Muoka, the Director of Public Affairs at NCC, had given this update through a statement released on Monday.
The statement had read:
“Following the interference on March 14, 2024, which affected data and voice services due to cuts in undersea fibre optics along the coasts of Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, we are happy to announce that our services have now been restored to approximately 90 per cent of their peak utilization capacities.” Recall that it was previously reported that 13 countries had been affected by the undersea cable cuts and luckily, the level of disruption for Nigeria had been minimum.“All operators who were impacted by the cuts have taken recovery capacity from submarine cables which were not affected by the cuts and have thus, retrieved about 90 per cent of their peak utilization capacities.
The NCC further said that mobile network operators have promised that their data and voice services would operate optimally until complete repairs of the undersea cables as they have managed to activate alternative connectivity to bring the situation back to normalcy.
The full update regarding the unplanned service disruption had not been given in this statement. In 2024, where a lot of services conducted by citizens (in their day-to-day activities) required voice and data services, this disruption really frustrated millions of people. Banks, service providers etc were affected, leading to loss of manpower, time and money respectively.
It would be better if the NCC provided back-up options to try incase such a situation of this magnitude ever repeated itself.