Somalia’s government says an ongoing internet outage is costing the country $10m (£7.7m) each day. The outage which affects southern Somalia was caused by damage to an undersea fibre-optic cable more than two weeks ago.
This major disaster is costing Somalia more than $130m. – Abdi Anshur Hassan
Somali Post and Telecommunications Minister Abdi Anshur Hassan has called the incident a “major disaster”, costing Somalia “more than $130m”.
According to the Minister, the cable was being fixed and service will be restored “this week”.
An overall estimate of the country’s internet carried out by the International Telecommunication Union reveals that in Somalia, just 1.6% of the population used the internet in 2014.
That same year, 3G mobile phone services in southern Somalia were cut off because of a threat from al-Shabab Islamist militants and the ban has stayed in place ever since.
Satellite internet is said to be available, but users complain that it is costly and slow and turn to Internet cafes which are quite popular in towns and cities, as they provide more reliable connectivity.
Source: BBC Africa