Particularly affected are banks, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and a broad spectrum of corporates and individuals who rely on data and Internet resources to facilitate their businesses and daily lives.ÂÂ
BusinessDay visited a number of banks yesterday and found that their ICT systems were suffering fits of failure because as SAT-3 was not available, they had resorted to using back up technologies which are not as reliable as SAT-3.
The ‘SAT-3 Consortium’ cut Nigeria off the network because the troubled state owned Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (Nitel), sole custodian and commercial operator of the facility in Nigeria, failed to pay its dues.
The SAT-3/ WASC is a fibre-optic submarine communications cable linking Portugal and Spain to South Africa, with connections to several West African countries along the route. It delivers heavy bandwidth for data, Internet and other uses which Nitel rents out to other telecom operators and deploys to service its own network.
BusinessDay gathered that Nitel had paid $300,000 maintenance fee but this had since expired without being renewed.
BusinessDay gathered that one of the reasons for the failure to pay is because there is confusion within the yet to be inaugurated board of Nitel.
As at yesterday, the said board was yet to be inaugurated by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP). This makes it illegal for it to act on the payment to SAT-3 Consortium which sits in South Africa, so that service can be restored.
It was gathered that following the revocation of the sale of Nitel to Transcorp, government had promised to release some funds to the board of the ailing national carrier to fix the repair the company and make it attractive to prospective investors.
An ongoing investigation into the sale of some assets of Nitel, among others, had stalled the inauguration of the board, as well as future action from government.
There is currently a tussle for supremacy between the top echelon of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and those of the Nigerian Communication Satellite Limited NigComSat). Both parties are on the board. Some of the said officials have been invited for questioning by security agents.
There have been allegations of award of contracts by the new board which the BPE frowned on Nigeria has about ten million Internet users as at December 2008, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Also a growing number of businesses in the country are tapping into the Internet to improve productivity, efficiency and currency, and to reduce costs.ÂÂ
Furthermore, several businesses as well as the various tiers of government have set up Internet-based services for the delivery of value and for revenue collection.
Industry watchers are hoping that the Federal Government will step in and resolve the matter in good time so that the country does not continue to suffer the gross loss in productivity, revenue, time and image from the shut down.