Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Beatrice Manka’a
Published on 2024-03-20 15:25:07
Cameroon’s Minister of Post and Telecommunications (MINPOSTEL), Libom Li Likeng, made a commitment to restoring normal internet and online services by the end of the week, during a crisis meeting held on Monday, March 18th, 2024.
Likeng’s pledge came after a meeting with the Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Board, Managing Directors of Mobile Telephone Operators, and Internet Service Providers, all aimed at addressing the internet disruptions that have been affecting the country. The Minister also announced that customers affected by the recent outages will be reimbursed for their data credit. In the meantime, traffic has been redirected to the South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL) cable, which connects Cameroon to Brazil, due to the failure of three submarine cables.
This development comes after widespread internet outages were reported across 13 African countries, including Cameroon, South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. While some countries like Liberia and South Africa have managed to restore services on a large scale, the cause of the cable failures remains unclear, resulting in frustration for millions of users across the continent.
Cloudflare Radar, a service that monitors internet connectivity, noted, “There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, affecting regions from north to south in Africa.”
During the meeting, key actions were discussed to address the situation, including repairing the damaged submarine cables, enhancing the SAIL cable system in Cameroon, improving power supply, and utilizing local infrastructure to mitigate the impact of internet outages that have been ongoing since March 14th.
Submarine cables are fiber optic cables that are crucial for carrying telecommunication traffic. These cables provide pathways for accessing content that is not hosted locally, and their interconnection serves as the backbone of the internet.
As efforts are being made to resolve the internet disruptions in Cameroon and other affected African countries, authorities are working diligently to restore normalcy to online services and ensure that users can reconnect and resume their digital activities without further interruptions.
Read the original article(French) on Mimi Mefo Info
