The crappy internet you’ve been experiencing may be over sooner than expected

folarin okunola

June 22, 2017 8:10 PM

MainOne, a Nigeria-based Internet and telecoms solutions provider that provides wholesale internet for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across West Africa, experienced a fault in its submarine cable system.

Mrs Funke Opeke, Managing Director of MainOne Cable

Internet connectivity has been crappy everywhere for about a week and half now and there is a reason: MainOne, a Nigeria-based Internet and telecoms solutions provider that provides wholesale internet for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across West Africa, experienced a fault in its submarine cable system.

MainOne, founded by Funke Opeke in 2009, runs a 14,000km submarine cable from Portugal to South Africa, with landings in 8 West African countries. This means it has the widest reach of any network provider in the region and provides the Internet which companies like MTN, Etisalat, SMILE, Spectranet and others, sell to you.

In a statement made available to Pulse, the company said: “MainOne hereby advises its customers that early in the morning of Sunday June 18th, 2017, we experienced a fault on our submarine cable system, 3000km offshore Portugal. The outage, the first of its kind in 7 years since our cable system came into operations, has caused disruptions in service to our international connectivity customers in West Africa.”

MainOne had initially told its customers (including Pulse) that it did not have a definite timeline for when the issue will be solved before committing to a 14-day timeline thanks to an Atlantic Cable Maintenance & Repair Agreement (ACMRA).

ALSO READ: Data service firm partners with Intel, WhoGoHost to deepen cloud penetration in Nigeria

However, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek reports that Temi Osunrinde, Marketing Communications Lead at MainOne, has said that timeline may be cut down to ten days.

“Supported by our cable maintenance arrangement with the Atlantic Cable Maintenance & Repair Agreement (ACMA), we immediately mobilized a repair vessel from France early Monday morning to pick up the necessary spares and personnel to recover the affected sections of the submarine cable in the Atlantic Ocean and effect repairs. The current estimated time for the repairs may be up to 14 days.

“We said 14 days because that the industry best practices, but full capacity could be restored within ten days. We are working round the clock to ensure customers get reprieve,” said Osunrinde via telephone, according to the report.

In the meantime, you will just have to bear with your ISP as far as the Internet viability is concerned. It should all be over soon.

folarin okunola