Internet outage to last for ‘unspecified time’-Hormuud Telecom

Major parts of Somalia will be without internet for an ‘unspecified time’ the country’s largest telecommunications operator has warned barely two months since the country was plunged offline.

Hormuud Telecom said in a tweet the outage was occasioned by maintenance operations but did not specify when the internet will be back.

“We are sorry to inform you that the internet will be shut down for maintenance purposes by the cable operator for an unspecified period of time. Please bear with us while the problem will be resolved,” Hormuud said in a tweet adding it would provide back up the internet for its clients ‘where possible.’

South-central regions are affected by the outage since they depend on the fibre optic cable terminating in Mogadishu. In late July, damage on the sea cable led to a two days internet black-out in major parts of the country.

EASSy Consortium affiliate in Somalia, Dalkom said then it had located the fault at about 27 kilometres from Mogadishu.

Somalia suffered one of its worst internet outages in mid-2017 when major parts of the country went without internet for close to a month. Telecommunications Minister Abdi Ashur Hassan said the country lost an average of $10 million a day as a result of the outage.

He called for investment in additional fibre optic cables to avoid overreliance on one cable.