Businessday :: News you can trust

As the disruption of data and internet services continued in the country on Tuesday, Lanre Ajayi, president of the Nigeria Internet Group, has urged the Federal Government to declare Sat 3 a critical national infrastructure because of its importance on security and the economy and to protect it from further disruptions.
Businesses and individuals in the country that leverage on the resource of the internet have been suffering shortfalls in productivity and revenue, arising from downtime cause by the disconnection of the Nigeria end of the South Atlantic 3/West African Submarine Cable (Sat 3).
Ajayi said in a chat with BusinessDay on Tuesday that “this problem is damaging businesses, damaging the economy. Imagine what difficulties travel agencies and software developers and others would be experiencing.
“What the cause is, we cannot say. We call on the Federal Government to do something about it quickly and declare that infrastructure a critical national resource because of its importance to the economy and to security.”
Telecom network, MTN Nigeria, says it is experiencing challenges with access to international bandwidth, leading to service disruption to some of its international and data /internet based services as a result of damage to one of the landing cables of the SAT 3 submarine cable system.
This is even as BusinessDay reports that the Sat 3 Consortium has disconnected Nigeria from its facility for failure to pay its dues. 
“We are experiencing some challenges with access to bandwidth which carries a very large portion of our international voice and data traffic out of the country,” said Wale Goodluck, corporate services executive, MTN. 
“While the cause of the problem is still being investigated by our service provider, the immediate consequence is that our international traffic will be affected. Specifically, our subscribers who make international calls may experience difficulties as we anticipate congestion on the international route.” 
Call quality may also be noticeably affected as we have resorted to the use of satellite at the moment, while exploring other better options,” Goodluck said. 
He said the situation would also adversely affect the operator’s international data services, such as 3.5G, GPRS and fixed internet services. 
“Subscribers who use our Fastlink data cards or mobile internet via 3.5G or GPRS, Blackberry users and Enterprise customers, who use our fixed broadband internet, will also be affected,” he said. 
Goodluck also said that while the submarine cables are owned and maintained by a third party, MTN has ensured that all available resources are being mobilised to see that a solution is found. He estimated that based on available information from our service provider the repair work make take up to ten days. 
In the meantime, he said MTN was exploring other alternatives where possible to provide some of the services adversely affected, adding that more alternatives are being sought to ease the difficulties that the situation has caused. 
“Our customers should kindly bear with us. We assure them that we have deployed all the resources available to us to ensure that full service is restored in the very near future,” he said.