Cable Damage Takes West Africa Offline

By Digital Trends Staff Published October 25, 2009

Just a couple of weeks ago, a new cable brought East Africa online. Now, problems with an undersea cable have caused communications disruption in several West African countries – specifically Benin, Togo, Niger and Nigeria.

The damage is to the SAT-3 cable which runs from Portugal and Spain to South Africa, via West Africa, the BBC reports, and in Nigeria it’s taken out around 70% of the bandwidth, forcing companies to use satellite links to keep in touch.

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The cable is 15,000 km long, and touches on several West African countries on its route.

"The rest of the system is unaffected by this fault," said a representative for Telkom South Africa, one of the SAT-3 shareholders.

It’s likely to be two weeks before a ship arrives to investigate the fault. Meanwhile Benin is routing traffic, and Togo and Niger remain offline.

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