Four cables fail off Côte d'Ivoire and thirteen countries lose connectivity
The WACS, ACE, MainOne and SAT-3 systems all went offline at close to the same time near Abidjan, where their routes converge. The Internet Society's outage report records disruption across thirteen countries — Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa and Togo. The preliminary cause given by one operator was seabed movement in the Trou-sans-Fond canyon off Abidjan rather than any human act. It is the definitive demonstration that four independent cables are one cable when they share a corridor.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- The cable chokepoint · concept · not located
- Redundancy and restoration in the cable network · concept · not located
- The turbidity current · natural phenomenon · not located
Evidence
Verified — Every field is supported by a cited authoritative source.
2024 West Africa Submarine Cable Outage Report
Narrow claim, and only this: that the Internet Society published an outage report in April 2024 on the West Africa submarine cable failure of 14 March 2024, and that the report records connectivity disruption across thirteen named countries — Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa and Togo. V55 verification basis: a retrieved search result carried the report's title, publisher and April 2024 date together with this country list and attributed them to internetsociety.org. The report PDF itself was not opened, and no measurement inside it — outage depth, duration or traffic loss — is claimed here.
Internet Society · 2024-04 · Verified
Internet Society, 2024 West Africa Submarine Cable Outage Report, April 2024, internetsociety.org
Recorded on The cable chokepoint
- The Grand Banks earthquake breaks cables in sequence
- The Hengchun earthquake doublet off southern Taiwan
- Cables in the Luzon Strait break in sequence over nine hours
- East Asian connectivity degrades for weeks
- Both cables to the Matsu Islands are cut within six days
- Four cables fail off Côte d'Ivoire and thirteen countries lose connectivity
- SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah · 2025-09-06
- Both cables to the Matsu Islands are cut within six days · 2023-02-02 – 2023-02-08
- The Hengchun earthquake doublet off southern Taiwan · 2006-12-26 12:26 UTC
- Cables in the Luzon Strait break in sequence over nine hours · 2006-12-26 – 2006-12-27
- East Asian connectivity degrades for weeks · 2006-12-26 – 2007-02
- The Grand Banks earthquake breaks cables in sequence · 1929-11-18