Industry News Page | Telecoms Chamber

Telecel Ghana has multiple sources of internet services through SAT3, WACS, ACE, and submarine fibre links to other international providers.

On the 12th of March 2024, Telecel Ghana lost internet capacity provided by WACS subsea cable, and immediately switched to ACE to maintain service.

On 14th March 2024, Telecel Ghana lost internet connectivity from its remaining providers SAT3 and ACE due to a cut in their undersea cables. This resulted in the disruption of data services on Mobile and Fixed networks.

Telecel Ghana has now secured new internet capacity and is progressively adding more capacities through local and international partners, including other Telecel subsidiaries. This, is in addition to local caching solutions which are enabling access to some content services such as YouTube, Facebook, Netflix etc.

Telecel Ghana sincerely appreciates the patience and understanding of its customers during this period. All customers will be refunded accordingly.

Please note that information circulating on social media platforms about the disconnection of Telecel Ghana due to debts owed is false and should be disregarded.

Source: Vodafone Ghana

The National Communications Authority (NCA) has said it has been difficult to determine the cause of the undersea fibre optic cables which have resulted in internet connectivity challenges.

This according to the Director General, Dr Joe Anokye is due to the distance between the four subsea cables.

“These 4 cables in Ivory Coast, Cote D’Ivoire, ACE, one of them is called Ace. That’s the one closer. it’s about 118km or so. Between that cable and the next cable is about 11 kilometres and just to put it in context, you know, 11 kilometres is from, like, you know, the general post office to Accra Mall.”

“The distance between that cable SAT-3 and the next cable, which is the main one, is allegedly to be about 67 kilometres, which is like from Accra Mall to Suhum. And all 3 were compromised. The distance between Main One and WACS, it’s also 77 kilometres. This is Suhum to Nkawkaw. So it is very difficult to determine exactly what happened,” he explained in an interview with Accra-based Citi FM.

Telecel, an Africa-focused telecommunications company, has paid a courtesy visit on Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, to officially announce the complete rebranding of Vodafone Ghana to Telecel Ghana as well as introduce the leadership of Telecel Group to him.

Both MTN Ghana and Telecel Ghana have today reported some improvement in internet access to customers following days of near total blackout due to the massive subsea cable cuts that happened on Thursday, March 14, 2024.

The cuts occurred on all four major submarine fibre optics cables that connect Ghana to the rest of the world and on which all telecoms and internet service provider in Ghana offer data/internet services to customers.

The four affected cables were as follows:

ACE – which stretches from France (in Europe) to Cape Town (South Africa
WACS – stretching from Portugal (in Europe) to Cape Town
SAT-3 – from Portugal/Spain to Cape Town
MainOne – from Portugal to Cape Town
Per a series of statements from the National Communications Authority, ACE, WACS, and MainOne lost 90% capacity due to the cut, while SAT-3 lost 100% capacity.

Hours of the disruption, AT Ghana was back on track providing service to its customers on the back of some limited backup capacity it had from WIOCC (West India Ocean Cable Company), while K-NET also fell back on its redundant capacity on Angola Cable to resume service with about 40 minutes.

But the two leading telcos in Ghana have been in the woods for days since the disruption, with customers largely unable to do anything meaningful online, except for WhatsApp text, and some limited access to YouTube and Netflix.