Cameroon calls for a probe following internet outage
Cameroon has called for an audit of mobile operators' networks, beginning with optic fibre and progressing to radio networks.
This follows last week’s internet outages throughout most of Africa, including Cameroon, caused by undersea cable breakages.
Last week, it was reported that four cables were damaged in shallow waters off the Ivory Coast, causing an internet outage.
The outages in Southern, Eastern, and West African countries.
Minette Libom Li Likeng, Cameroon's minister of posts and telecoms, has asked for a probe in order to protect customers in the future.
She directed the Telecoms Regulatory Board to head the investigation and take remedial action until full connection is restored.
“Any unused data credit following this incident will be systematically returned to the consumers,” the minister said, adding that the government is keen to protect consumers of electronic communications services.
She added: “We hope that before the end of this week, we will recover the maximum of our traffic.”
So far, internet data traffic in the country has been diverted via the 6,000-kilometer-long South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL) submarine cable system that connects Cameroon and Brazil.
The minister held an emergency meeting in the capital Yaounde with telecom providers, Camtel, MTN Cameroon, and Orange Cameroun, who all agreed to diversify their international access routes with satellite redundancy channels in order to mitigate the effects of the blackout if a similar incident occurred again.