Cameroon’s Minister of Post and Telecommunications (MINPOSTEL), Libom Li Likeng, pledged a return to normal internet and online services by the end of the week during a crisis meeting held on Monday, March 18th, 2024.
Likeng’s assurance follows a meeting with the Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Board, Managing Directors of Mobile Telephone Operators and Internet Service Providers [meeting aimed to address internet disruptions].
The Minister revealed that customer data credit will be reimbursed for those affected by the recurrent outages. In the meantime, traffic has been diverted to the South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL) cable connecting Cameroon and Brazil, following the failure of three submarine cables.
This news comes after widespread internet outages were reported on Thursday across 13 African countries, including Cameroon, South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. While Liberia and South Africa have seen a large-scale restoration of services, the cause of the cable failures remains unclear, causing frustration for millions of users throughout the continent.
According to Cloudflare Radar, a service that provides information on internet connectivity, “There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa.”
Key actions discussed at the meeting include repairing damage to the submarine cables, optimizing the SAIL cable system in Cameroon, increasing power supply, and leveraging local infrastructure to minimize the effects of internet outages experienced by users since March 14th.
Background on Submarine Cables
Submarine cables are fibre optic cables that carry telecommunication traffic. These cables provide routes to access content not hosted locally, and their interconnection forms the backbone of the internet.
