Multiple outages on undersea cables are disrupting internet and online services and have been affecting millions of people in Africa for the past two weeks. This disruption could have far-reaching consequences not only for commercial operations and personal communications, but also for the healthcare and education sectors.

The recent outages have been caused by cuts affecting the undersea cables near Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, namely the West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne and SAT3 cables. These submarine cable systems play a critical role in connecting Africa to the global internet and, therefore, any disruption or damage to the cables can lead to widespread outages.

To mitigate the impact of such outages, some network operators, such as Paratus Group, have invested in multiple subsea cables to ensure redundancy and maintain the stability of its networks. Because it has capacity on alternative cable systems – specifically Equiano and South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) – Paratus can provide a resilient capacity solution to its customers.

Paratus Group Chief Technical Officer, Rolf Mendelsohn, says: "In today's world, reliable internet connectivity is no longer a luxury but an absolute necessity. As a responsible network operator, we have invested heavily in building a robust and resilient infrastructure, including redundant undersea cable systems. Thanks to our proactive approach, our customers remain connected and are experiencing minimal service disruptions during this challenging period."