GAZA, Friday, October 13, 2023 (WAFA) – The Palestinian Telecommunications Group said today that its network suffered heavy damage that greatly affected its work in Gaza, warning that renewed outages and damage to the network would cause a complete cessation of telecommunications and Internet services.
In a briefing on the situation in the Gaza Strip, the Communications
The group indicated that the aggression against the Gaza Strip, which has continued since Saturday, has caused several outages on the main paths of optical fibers that connect the Gaza Strip to the West Bank and then to the outside world, leaving the Strip without a protected network and in a sensitive state of emergency.
In the event of renewed outages and damage to the network, the group warned, Gaza's communication with the West Bank will be cut off, which means a complete cessation of communications and internet services, adding that citizens will lose the ability to communicate and be completely isolated.
The group explained that 35 percent of the main network elements were disrupted, such as poles, cables, and fiber-optic lines that connect Gaza internally.
The network also suffered severe damage as a result of power outages, malfunctions in terrestrial and aerial networks, or the destruction of some network devices, which negatively affected the network.
The quality of telecommunications and Internet services varies from interruption to complete interruption, the group pointed out.
It indicated that 35 percent of the terminals of the fixed telephone network and home internet were disrupted, which greatly affected about 40 percent of its subscribers, as well as cellular subscribers, due to the disruption of 30 percent of the sites and towers of the cellular network.
The group affirmed that the headquarters building of the General Administration of the Fixed Telephone Network and Home Internet, located in the Al-Rimal neighborhood, was bombed, and many of the company’s buildings and facilities were partially destroyed in various places in the Gaza Strip.
A.D./T.R.
