The Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) says there is need to  locally domicile content and put more investment in localised data centres to reduce the effect of disruptions in connectivity.

The president of ATCON, Tony Emoekpere, told journalists in Lagos that it was important to domicile content locally as this would make for prompt fixing of outages and disruptions.

The ATCON president was reacting against the backdrop of the internet disruption that occurred on Thursday which had major effect on banks and Telcos in Nigeria and South Africa.

Mr Emoekpere revealed that most domiciled content in the country were not affected by the disruption.

“Nothing can be done exactly to reduce damage of submarine cables, but most importantly, there is need to domicile more of our content locally.

“Most domiciled content were not affected because such content were hosted on Data centres localised in the country.

“There is need for investment in more data centres in the country to reduce the effect of internet disruption,’’ he said.

According to him, Nigeria and South Africa were the least affected because of more submarine cables coming into the country.

Meanwhile in a statement released by the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms industry regulator, confirmed the cut.

NCC said a combination of cable cuts, resulting in equipment faults on the major undersea cables along the West African Coast had negatively impacted data and fixed telecom services in several countries of West Africa.

“Which includes Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire,” according to a statement signed by NCC’s Director, Public Affairs, NCC Mr Reuben Muoka.

“The cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.”

“Cable companies – West African Cable System (WACS) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) in the West Coast route from Europe – have experienced faults, while SAT3 and MainOne have downtime, according to NCC.

“Similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), are said to have been cut at some point around the Red Sea, resulting in degradation of services across these routes,’’ he said

According to him, in Nigeria and other West African countries, internet access and speed have experienced disruptions in the networks of service providers in the affected countries.

He said that the operators of these cables have commenced repairs already, and services are gradually being restored.

“They have promised to work round the clock to ensure that services are restored to the affected countries within the shortest possible time.”

Also speaking, senior manager, external relations, Funsho Aina, said that a service had been restored.

Telcos and banks had, on Thursday, experienced major internet disruption in the country.

(NAN)