Vandalism on fiber connectivity cables both local and international greatly affecting Airtel Malawi’s services

* Airtel Malawi promises it is undertaking all measures to ensure minimum impact from the outages

* We faced network challenges in August and October due to international fiber outages in Mozambique and Zambia

* And locally from some areas in Malawi due to the ongoing road construction works

By Pickson Chipeso, Patience Longwe, MANA & Duncan Mlanjira, Maravi Express

Following concerns of internet connectivity outages of Airtel Malawi, the Parliamentary Committee on Media, Information & Communication invited the mobile phone service provider to an engagement meeting to appreciate the challenges they are facing.

Speaking yesterday at Parliament in Lilongwe after the meeting with Airtel Malawi’s acting Managing Director, Abdul Shaik and his management team, the Parliamentary Committee’s chairperson Susan Dossi added that they also wanted to find out of the plans Airtel is implementing to ensure these issues are resolved.

“As we are aware, communication is key and most of the times people do business online and also communicate online with colleagues,” she said. “If people are failing to do that because of poor internet or calls services, that’s a big challenge.

“So we invited them to explain to us, as a Committee, on these challenges,” she said, while highlighting that the acting Airtel Managing Director attributed the challenges being faced to fiber cable cuts due to vandalism on their connectivity lines.

She also said the on-going road construction is also cutting off the fibre cables and the Committee has resolved to visit the places where they are being cut off — “to verify what is indeed happening on the ground”.

In a separate interview yesterday with Malawi News Agency (MANA), the acting Managing Director, Shaik said they are taking all necessary steps to ensure people in different communities are having access to all services.

“We are confident and can demonstrate the efforts we have made as a company to ensure the protection and maintenance of the high quality of services provided to the public,” he said.

And speaking to Maravi Express today, acting MD Shaik said: “We faced network challenges in August and October due to international fiber outages in Mozambique and Zambia and locally from some areas in Malawi due to the ongoing road construction works.

“For local fiber cuts, we have already implemented measures by sourcing additional capacity from other service providers like Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM).

“For international fiber cuts, we are undertaking all measures to ensure minimum impact from the outages and will continue to take all necessary steps to ensure communities continue to have access to our services,” Shaik said.