MainOne, a leading provider of submarine cable systems, has revealed that the repair process for its damaged undersea cable may take up to five weeks.
Following a network failure on Thursday, the company made this announcement in a statement on Friday. Based on its preliminary investigations, the failure was caused by an external event, which resulted in a cut along the West African coast, offshore Cote d’Ivoire, in the Atlantic Ocean.
The outage had a significant negative impact, especially on Nigerian banks, as MainOne is a major internet provider for some of them. The disruption caused customers to be inconvenienced as they were unable to access banking apps or use USSD services.
Jerrymusa.com reports that the company offers connectivity and hybrid cloud solutions to commercial and microfinance institutions, as well as major telecom operators, ISPs, and educational institutions.
Customers have been informed by MainOne of its committed efforts to speed up the repair procedure and quickly bring back network connectivity.
Undersea Cable Maintainance Ongoing
The technology company disclosed that it had a maintenance contract for its submarine cable repair services with the Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement.
“After lowering the cable back to the seabed and guiding it into the ideal position, the repair process included testing and examining the cable joints for flaws.
It went on to say that it would probably take around five weeks to finish the operation, which involves deploying a ship to transport the required parts from Europe to West Africa.
Part of the statement said, “To provide repair services, we have a maintenance agreement with Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement for the submarine cable.”
“Select and designate a vessel first. The vessel must then sail to the site of the fault to carry out the necessary repairs after retrieving the appropriate replacement parts.
“The damaged piece of the submarine cable will next need to be dragged from the seabed onto the ship, where it will be spliced by qualified specialists to finish the repair.
“After the repair, the joints will be examined and tested to make sure there are no flaws. After that, the submarine cable will be lowered back to the seabed and positioned properly.
“The repairs could take one to two weeks, and it might take the ship two to three weeks to transport from Europe to West Africa after the parts are received and the vessel is mobilised.”
“The majority of submarine cable faults are caused by landslides, earthquakes, and equipment failure, in addition to human activities like fishing and anchoring in shallow waters close to the coast.
MainOne reported that all human activity, including ship anchors, fishing, and drilling, had been instantly ruled out due to the distance from land and the cable depth of roughly 3 km at the location of the fault.
“We will gather more information when the cable is retrieved during the repair exercise, but our preliminary analysis would suggest some form of seismic activity on the seabed resulted in a break to the cable,” the operator stated.