MTN Nigeria has announced a scheduled network maintenance exercise that will temporarily disrupt services in 101 sites across Adamawa, Borno, and Kano states. The two-hour downtime, which will affect 2G, 3G, 4G, and 10 enterprise services, is billed for Sunday, August 24, between 6:00 AM and 8:00 AM.
According to MTN’s spokesperson, Lakinbofa Goodluck, the activity is aimed at permanently restoring a previously damaged fibre infrastructure along the AFCOT–Bawo Village route in Adamawa State. The exercise involves cutting over traffic to a newly installed fibre cable, designed to replace old, compromised spans and ensure long-term network stability.
The affected locations include:
Kano State: Nasarawa LGA
Adamawa State: Girei, Song, Mubi North, Hong, Gombi, Fufore, Mubi South, Madagali, Michika, Maiha, Chibok, and Yola North LGAs
Borno State: Askira/UBA and Shani LGAs
MTN added that the work will be conducted during daylight hours for security reasons.
“This upgrade is necessary to eliminate damaged fibre spans and improve overall network stability. We regret any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding as we work to improve service quality and reliability,” the statement said.
Recurring Fibre Cuts: A Growing Threat to Telecoms Stability
Service disruption from fibre cuts has become one of the most persistent challenges in Nigeria’s telecom industry. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) reported that in the first week of June 2025 alone, services were disrupted in nine states (Rivers, Katsina, Lagos, Enugu, Benue, Anambra, Imo, Abia, and Akwa Ibom) following multiple fibre incidents that affected MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9Mobile.
Fibre cuts are often caused by:
Road construction and excavation works (contractors frequently damage buried cables due to lack of proper mapping).
Vandalism and theft (fibre cables are mistaken for copper or deliberately destroyed by saboteurs).
Community disputes (host communities sometimes damage fibre routes over unresolved compensations).
Natural causes (erosion, flooding, and heavy rainfall washing away buried cables).
Vehicle accidents (heavy-duty trucks and construction equipment snapping overhead or shallowly buried cables).
MTN’s Experience with Fibre Cuts
MTN alone recorded 4,700 cable cuts between January and June 2025, bringing the total to about 13,700 incidents in just 18 months. A regional breakdown shows:
Northern Nigeria: 2,500 cuts
South-West: 2,800 cuts
South-East & South-South: 3,500 cuts combined
Each incident results in loss of connectivity — affecting voice calls, SMS, USSD transactions, mobile data, and enterprise services.
For subscribers, this translates into dropped calls, failed bank transactions, and patchy internet service, often at crucial moments. For operators, it means millions of naira lost in repairs and service downtime.
Nigeria’s telecom operators have repeatedly called on government authorities to treat telecom infrastructure as “critical national assets”. Despite this, challenges around Right of Way (RoW) costs, insecure routes in insurgency-prone regions, and lack of coordinated infrastructure protection policies continue to leave networks vulnerable.
For MTN, Sunday’s scheduled downtime is a necessary short-term pain for long-term service quality. But with fibre cuts rising nationwide, many industry watchers warn that Nigeria’s digital economy risks being slowed down unless tougher protection frameworks, public awareness campaigns, and coordinated infrastructure sharing agreements are implemented.
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