Mobile internet users woke up to experience slow connection on Wednesday with many taking to social media to complain about how the challenge is affecting their lives. Journalists, Digital Marketers, and many others were affected by what they termed ‘internet blackout’ as their productivity was hampered. Subscribers on Telecel (formerly Vodafone Ghana) were the first to notice connection issues followed by MTN subscribers.

According to this internet user, Bright Simons citing numerous sources, the seeming nationwide internet blackout experienced by a section of the mobile internet population was due to a submarine cable cut, or billing dispute between Telecel and bulk carriers. He sought to enquire from the industry regulator National Communications Authority (NCA) what it was doing to resolve the matter.

The Ghana Chamber of Communications, however, released a statement explaining the cause of the outage. According to the chamber, the outage was caused on “multiple submarine optic fibre cables that come into Ghana”. Some of the cables were down while others delivered limited capacity which impacted internet, data and Voice over IP (VoIP) services of the mobile network operators and data service providers that belong to the chamber.

The statement concludes, “further investigations are being carried out, as well as work to resolve the current problems to restore service to our customers.”

MTN Ghana also issued a statement apologising to its customers who were experiencing challenges in accessing data services as it was due to a “disruption” on its international undersea cables.

NCA is yet to offer a comment on how it is assisting the service providers resolve the issues.