VODAFONE GHANA, in collaboration with members of its undersea cable consortium, has successfully repaired a shunt break on its undersea cable that led to the abrupt loss of internet service countrywide about a fortnight ago.

Millicent Yawa Atsu, Manager, Technology, Vodafone Ghana, who disclosed this to journalists Thursday in Accra when they were taken on a tour of the operation room of the SAT 3/WASC/SAFE at Vodafone’s Accra High Street branch, said the break was the second since the cable was laid.

CS Chamarel, the cable submarine ship from South Africa that undertook the repair, has been in the country since the problem was experienced.

Vodafone Ghana had to reconfigure settings of the cable that originates from Portugal to Ghana (northern section) onto the one that connects Cote d’Ivoire to South Africa (southern section) hence the slow movement of internet traffic these few weeks.

“Were it not for the cable that connected Cote d’Ivoire and South Africa, Ghana would have been completely been in an internet black out.”

“Vodafone Ghana was able to provide its voice services courtesy of its Kuntunse Earth Station which readily provided a competent back,” Mrs Atsu indicated.

Internet users between 10pm on Saturday and 4am on Sunday would recall there was once again a slow movement in traffic and this was due to the reconfiguration.

This was needed to restore the cable to its original settings.

David Gaul, Head, Services Management, Vodafone Ghana, briefing journalists on what led to the break referred technically as a shunt one, revealed that the optic fibre cable which is just like human hair strands in nature, is protected by five elements.

A thick black plastic layer protects the cables from the outside followed by a white one, and then comes a copper guard. In the copper guard are laterally arranged aluminium layers, followed by a light aluminium layer which houses the real cables.

The copper covering transmits power though the cable and once it is exposed, there is bound to be a problem.

Mr Gaul said there was a break in the protective layers to the level of the copper cover. This, in technical parlance, can be relayed to the layman as short-circuiting.

This way, power that is conveyed from one part of the broken cable to the other part is dropped into earth.

Mr Gaul therefore assured patrons of the company’s internet services and the general public that Vodafone Ghana has fixed the problem and will continue with its improved services.

On June 17, 1999, in Pretoria (South Africa), an international consortium of more than 40 telecommunications operators signed the construction and maintenance agreement for a new submarine cable system known as SAT 3/WASC/SAFE.

Created in January 1998 from the combination of two earlier submarine cable initiatives: the South Africa – Far East (SAFE) and the South Africa Telecommunications – West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT 3/ WASC), the project, with a cost of more that $650 million, spans a distance of over 28,000 kilometers linking 17 landing points in 15 countries from Malaysia ad India to Portugal and Spain via South Africa.

A further 25 landlocked African countries can be logged onto the cable through terrestrial and satellite facilities. It has the potential to access 90 percent of Africa’s existing sub-Saharan telephone market in which 72 percent of the region’s population lives.    

By Samuel Boadi