Mobile internet services briefly cut across eastern and southern Libya

By Jamal Adel.

Beida, 5 May 2015:

Telecommunications were briefly cut in eastern . . .[restrict]and southern Libya this evening because of electricity outages at the Hatif Libya telecoms control centre at Khoms, east of Tripoli. The internet and mobile phone networks in over half the country were hit.

The cuts had been initially reported to have been caused a cable breakage. However, the director of Hatif Libya has denied this.

“No cable was cut,” Libya director Hussain Al-Tuwaileb told the Libya Herald. “The cuts in Hatif Libya telecommunications were caused by the electricity shortages,” he said.

The Hatif Libya control station is fed by the national electricity grid, Al-Tuwaileb explained, and although the station had its own emergency generators they could only provide power for a limited time. Any longer blackouts inevitably disrupted the telecommunications services.

Once power was restored this evening, telecommunications came back on after about an hour.   At Beida, seat of both the government and the Constitution Drafting Assembly, there are power cuts for couple hours every day, severely weakening mobile phone and internet coverage. [/restrict]