The National Communications Authority (NCA) has said it has been difficult to determine the cause of the undersea fibre optic cables which have resulted in internet connectivity challenges.

This according to the Director General, Dr Joe Anokye is due to the distance between the four subsea cables.

“These 4 cables in Ivory Coast, Cote D’Ivoire, ACE, one of them is called Ace. That’s the one closer. it’s about 118km or so. Between that cable and the next cable is about 11 kilometres and just to put it in context, you know, 11 kilometres is from, like, you know, the general post office to Accra Mall.”

“The distance between that cable SAT-3 and the next cable, which is the main one, is allegedly to be about 67 kilometres, which is like from Accra Mall to Suhum. And all 3 were compromised. The distance between Main One and WACS, it’s also 77 kilometres. This is Suhum to Nkawkaw. So it is very difficult to determine exactly what happened,” he explained in an interview with Accra-based Citi FM.

All subsea cable landing service providers in Ghana (ACE, MainOne, SAT-3 and WACS) were on March 14 completely cut off from international data services.

The situation has affected data services in the West African sub-region and the NCA says it will take a minimum of five weeks to fully restore the internet.

In the short term, NCA wants network operators to prioritise certain critical government agencies when allocating data resources in the wake of the recent internet outages.

This follows a meeting with stakeholders on Monday.

These institutions include Bank of Ghana (BoG), Ghana Association of Banks (GAB), Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), Central Securities Depository, Ghana Water Company Limited, Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), Subsea Cable Landing Service Providers, Ghana Internet Exchange (GIX), and Accra Internet Exchange (AIX).

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