Nigeria’s Telecommunications company giant, MTN Nigeria has apologized to its customers, and explained that the network outage experienced by subscribers for the major part of Wednesday was caused by “multiple fibre cuts”.
According to data by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), MTN boasts 87,038,768 subscribers as of December 2023, representing 38.79 percent of the total market share, the highest in the country by any licensed Mobile Network Operator (MNO).
The 87 million subscribers of the MNO experienced difficulty making and receiving calls for hours on Wednesday, fuelling rumours that the NCC had made its threat that all telcos bar subscribers not linked to the National Identification Numbers (NIN), with February 28, 2024, as deadline.
Many subscribers were stranded with some persons visiting MTN offices nearest to them to get explanations.
However, MTN, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), attributed the situation to “multiple fibre cuts”.
“You have been experiencing challenges connecting to the network due to a major service outage caused by multiple fibre cuts affecting voice and data services,” the post read.
“Our engineers are working hard to resolve with services gradually being restored in some areas.
“We apologise for the inconvenience and ask for your patience and understanding as the team works to restore full service as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile, the NCC, on Wednesday, issued a directive to telecom service providers to bar subscribers who have failed to link their phone numbers to their NIN on or before February 28, 2024.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Aminu Maida, who gave the directive through the Director of Public Affairs, Ruben Mouka, at the 45th Kaduna International Trade Fair on Wednesday, insisted that as a matter of critical national security, telecom consumers must link their NIN to their SIM cards.
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