Internet service has temporarily been restored to South and Central Somalia after Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) remotely switched on the branching unit by re-configuring the power set-up temporarily as Sudan is isolated for now. Because the fault proved to be at sea, EASSy decided to perform a BU switch to restore traffic, and traffic cleared from 13:52UTC on 27 July 2020, according to a report to the Ministry of Post, Telecom and Technology (MPTT) by Dalkom Somalia, which is a local affiliate of EASSy Consortium.
The Ministry is further informed that the EASSy Consortium, in the meantime, mobilized an e-marine repair vessel to undertake the repair at EASSy Segment 10, which is calculated at about 27km from the Mogadishu BMH.
H.E. Abdi Ashur Hassan, the Minister of Post, Telecommunications and Technology thanked Dalkom Somalia, Hormuud Telecom and other operators for their timely response to this incident. He, however, asked the operators to be more vigilant until the issue is finally resolved.
The minister reiterated his call for companies to invest in more fiber optic cables to provide redundancy and reduce our dependence on a single fiber optic cable because Somalia’s economy is gradually becoming more internet-based as banks, money transfer, education, airline, media, and some government services, mainly depend on internet to provide their services.
“We call on the companies that are in the process of bringing other fiber optic cables to speed up their work, because that will be part of the long-term solution,” concluded the Minister.
We will provide more updates as they become available.
Ministry of Post, Telecommunications and Technology
