| The Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL) PLC has announced a disruption in the services rendered by Sat-3, the major fibre optic cable serving the West African sub-region. In a statement issued Sunday in Abuja, by its spokesman, Abdullah El-Amin, NITEL blamed the disruption on a cut inflicted on one of its submarine cables by a ship.
The statement said: “Nigerian Telecommunications Plc regrets to announce a temporary disruption of its SAT-3 services sequel to a submarine cable cut at the high sea that was caused by a ship that maliciously anchored on the non-anchor zone of the high sea directly on the NITEL SAT-3 cable.” The communications company added that “NITEL and the SAT-3 Network Administrator in South Africa were able to detect the ship on the non-anchor zone, using NITEL’s world class Automatic Identification System (AIS), which is a satellite-based monitoring system that monitors the movement of ships/vessels around the SAT-3 cable line on the Atlantic Ocean located at the NECOM House Lagos. “To avert the catastrophe, NITEL immediately notified the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to redirect the ship from the non-anchor zone, alas, the NPA’s non-responsiveness led to the submarine cable cut and sudden service disruption at about 2 a.m. Friday, 26 August, 2011. ‘As at press time, NITEL was able to localize the fault at about 12km from the SAT-3 Cable station inside the high sea and has already deployed the cable repair ship for immediate service restoration. We apologize for any inconvenience experienced by the service disruption,” the national telecommunication stated. |
Aug302011