P&T minister outlines guidelines to address internet disruption.

Minister Libom Likeng, among other things, urged the three main telecoms service providers to steadily increase their internet supply capacities and take other proper measures to ensure the ongoing crisis is fully addressed in the short-term and long-term basis. 

Speaking to the press Monday, Minister Libom Likeng, who was in her first public outing after several backstage activities since the incident occurred, said the ongoing disruptions was caused by a breakdown on the submarine cables of the West Coast of West Africa, touching the WACS, SAT-3 and Main One lines.

She said the ministry as government’s arm in charge of overseeing the smooth functioning of telecommunications activities in the country, has however, made and continues making efforts in ensuring Cameroon bounces back fully.

She mentioned diverting of Cameroon’s network from the three failed cables to Cameroon’s SAIL cable, an interlink between Cameroon and South American country, Brazil. 

The tactic, the minister explained, is the major reason accounting for Cameroon’s ability to better manage the shocks of the breakdown than the other dozen countries affected by the incident in Sub-Saharan Africa, since the disruption, late last week.

Multiple new workable guidelines

Top among the new measures outlined by the minister is the reinforcement of active and passive infrastructures run by telecoms operators.

The minister also challenged telecommunications companies to strengthen their local cache order to “save as much information as possible locally to mitigate the effects of future incidents of the same nature”. 

She also recommended the “diversification of international access routes with satellite redundancy channels” used by Cameroon and the need to “carry out an independent audit of operators’ end-to-end networks, starting with fiber-optic and then radio networks,” to boost their operating capacities. 

“Also, one of the future technics is to multiply our internal connection through systems like satellite coverage. I think if we put all these together, and with the cooperation between the operators, we will be ready to quickly recover if such an incident happens again,” Minister Libom Likeng added. 

Early short-term solutions underway

Before the new measures, which are expected to benefit Cameroon mainly on a long-term basis, comes to join the already fruitful strides made in addressing the situation at the level of the cables, Cameroon has been able to manage the shock by increasing the capacity of internet supplied through the SAIL cable. 

According to Minister Libom Likeng, since the incident first occurred between March 14 and 15, the capacity of internet supplied in the country has been increased from 70 giga bytes per second to 170 giga bytes per second. 

The minister said works are also underway to ensure that the capacity is further increased from the 170 giga bytes per second to 370 giga bytes per second in a week’s time. 

To ensure an even more efficient handling of the situation, Minister Libom Likeng said the capacity will later on be expanded to 500 giga bytes per second, after attaining the current short-term target of 370 giga bytes. 

These efforts, she said, adds to the already announced dedication to systematically refund the unused data consumers lost as a result of the incident.

The minister said the strict respect of all the announced guidelines will be followed up by the Telecommunications Regulatory Board, ART. 

“The State will always stand by the people of Cameroon and protection of the population in terms of the provision of electronic communications services,” the minister stated.

Emergency solutions to devastating breakdown

The recently launched bid by the ministry, she said, is aimed at helping Cameroon in shaking off effects of what has been a huge breakdown on the internet service system, since last week.

Since last Thursday March 14, internet services have been interrupted in Cameroon. 

Twelve other countries in Sub Saharan Africa, including Ghana, South Africa and Ivory Coast, are also being affected.

Telecom experts and operators say the incident was caused by a damage on sub-sea cables in the Red Sea.

The incident, experts added, touched four sub-sea cables, including the West Africa Cable System, Main One, South Atlantic 3, and ACE sea cables, which are all arteries for telecommunications data.

The damage has affected the smooth flow of internet, serving as a huge hinderance to online operations. 

Reports suggest it may take five weeks or more to fully address the situation.

In the last days, telecommunications service providers, including MTN and Orange, have said they are fully engaged in fixing the situation.

Cameroon’s state-run company, CAMTEL, has also been playing a frontline role in addressing the situation, both locally and internationally.