SOMALIA- It has been confirmed that the Federal Government of Somalia in collaboration with the owner of the fiber-optic cable has successfully restored Internet and data services to South and Central Somalia. Apparently, the loss of Internet and data services for nearly three weeks caused considerable economic damage to many sectors of the Somali economic, of which commerce, education, healthcare, and the delivery of Government services are obvious ones.
According to a report from the Ministry of Posts, Telecom and Technology of Somalia, the Ministry is working on a national communication and information technologies policy in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders. Thus, the Ministry of Post, Telecommunications and Technology will “put enormous focus and spared no efforts in trying to minimize the damage to the nation’s economy by assisting the owner of the fiber-optic cable to expedite the restoration of the services and by providing permits and security protection to the repair ship.”
Learning from the past incident, not only because of it’s adverse effects on the economy but also by way of averting any future re-occurrence, the Ministry has resolved to be committed to work with all public and private stakeholders to ensure an outage of this magnitude and length does not occur again. The Ministry has thus put forward some measures to address the situation.
It is reported that a law is currently being structured to “protect the interests of consumers, telecommunication companies, other companies as well as the public sector who would have clear legal recourse through the Law to recover damages and/or levy fines on telecommunication companies who didn’t meet their legal commitment.”
As for Telecommunication companies providing undersea infrastructure, a note of warning has been sounded: they are “required to work with the relevant Government agencies to prevent ships docking at the Mogadishu port from damaging this vital infrastructure.”
In addition, “telecommunication service providers are informed of the need to provide backup and fail-over methods for their services to minimize the impact of outages. It is equally stated that “Government will promote and encourages investors to invest in other cable systems because the unfortunate outage clearly demonstrated how the pervasiveness of usage and the critical nature of the Internet for the country’s economic and social life.
Finally, the “Ministry has commenced work on a national communication and information technologies policy in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders. This policy, at the end “will ensure that every citizen would get basic Internet and telecommunication services with adequate speed and affordable cost.”
Correspondent: Ridwan A. Olayiwola
