ITU Stakeholders Agree On Strategies To Quell Marine Cable Disruption
By Stella Enenche,Abuja
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) stakeholders have agreed on strategies to tackle marine cable disruption.
This was made known on Friday at the sidelines of the just concluded International summit on Submarine Cable Resilience in Abuja.
The Secretary-General of African Telecommunications Union, John Omo, said the summit was crucial, saying there was urgent need for partnership
between all concerned agencies.
According to Omo, from the statistics, Africa had disadvantages in terms of density as against population, terrain and coastal systems, which made it have more cable cuts than other regions of the world.
He recalled that the west coast of Africa recently had a major cable cut and yet the region have not had sufficient collaborative frameworks within countries or its region on mitigating the issue.
He urged the region to have a system where individuals in the ecosystem know what to do in the event of cable cuts, adding that it is an emergency that need to be dealt with.
“In terms of density as against population, we still have the lowest density worldwide.Because of the nature of our terrain and coastal systems, there are a lot more cable cuts in Africa than in any other region of the world.
“We have not had sufficient collaborative frameworks, even within countries or within our region, in terms of how to deal with this phenomenon, if there is a cable cut.
“If you think of issues of piracy and phishing in East Coast of Africa, we recently had a major cable cut.We need to have a system where each and every person in the ecosystem knows what to do in the event of a cable cut; it is an emergency and we to deal with it,” he said.
The Co-Chair of the submarine cables resilience advisory board, Sandra Maximiano, on her part said the declaration showed a big commitment of all the organisations to work together in building more resilience for submarine cable ecosystem.
She also said that, the advisory board had formed three working groups that would deal with different aspects like risk mitigation, fostering collaboration, and time deployment of repairing submarine cables.
“We created these working groups so that they will synergise and submit their reports to the advisory board, after which there will be a timeline for implementation.”
She lauded the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, for putting together the event, which had lots of sharing of information and urged other countries to emulate same gesture from Nigeria.
The summit had representation from the 194 ITU member countries with over 300 delegates in attendance including, the Nigerian Minister of Communications Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani and all heads of agencies under the ministry.
