Undersea cable cuts a major wake-up call for Ghana – Haruna
The recent undersea fibre optic cable cuts that caused an internet outage across Ghana should be a catalyst for investment and expansion in the telecommunication and internet delivery sectors to forestall any future disaster, former Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu, has said.
Mobile telecommunications and internet data consumers have suffered a blackout since Thursday, March 14, prompting Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and other stakeholders to look for alternative backups.
While the government, through the Ministry of Communication and the National Communications Authority (NCA), operators of the undersea cables, and MNOs desperately seek a solution, the MP for Tamale South is drawing attention to the sector because of the adverse impact.
All online services, including ride-hailing, payment systems, banking, and other forms of trading, have been badly hit.
Consequently, Minister of Communication and Digitalization, Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, was in Parliament to brief the House about measures that will enhance internet connectivity progressively until full restoration.
However, the NDC MP is not fully convinced.
“What the minister has done is to lay bare or naked the lack of redundancy in Ghana and the lack of internet capacity in Ghana and the lack of domestic internet capacity in Ghana and our continuous heavy reliance on external connectivity.
“This is an industry that is largely private sector driven. We need to create an enabling environment for them to expand access,” he argued.
For him, the latest development “is a major wake-up call for Ghana” because “the banking sector could almost ground to a halt”.
He was worried about “academics [and other areas that rely on] online connectivity [that are] ground to a halt”.“Electricity [is] ground to a halt…all attributed to a cut in a submarine cable,” he bemoaned.
The National Communications Authority (NCA) has announced that it will require a minimum of five weeks to fully restore data services nationwide.
This follows a meeting with top management from subsea cable landing service providers and mobile network operators (MNOs) such as AT, MTN, and Telecel.
During the meeting, the subsea cable landing service providers told the authority that they had remotely identified the approximate locations of the damage and had made preparations to dispatch repair vessels to the location for physical assessment and restoration.