Status 
This report is developed to update the humanitarian actors on the voice and internet connectivity level in Gaza to inform their response and to provide a description of the main challenges and needs to advance repairs.
The Palestinian operators – since the beginning of the war – managed to maintain a minimum level of services wherever possible in Gaza and as informed by humanitarian priorities and movement of people.  

Network status:
• ~30% of mobile sites in Gaza are active. This allowed for a good service coverage as can be seen on the map in Annex 1. Despite this coverage, the quality of the service has been very low considering the high congestions of uses in very small areas and accordingly the limited infrastructure that is serving them. This has been monitored with the percentage of call drops that reaches 60%. One mobile radio communications site (Car on Wheels (COW)) was deployed in Gaza in August and this helped with quicker response to continuous movement of IDPs. More sites including COWs need to be activated to improve the quality of the services and their distribution.  
• The 3 internal backbone lines are still damaged since the beginning of the year which is limiting the potential of servicing people from all the activated sites. 
• ~24% of fixed internet infrastructure is active and is concentrated in the middle areas mainly as can be seen on the map in Annex 2. Expanding coverage is mainly hindered with the inability to bring in fixed and wireless materials that would enable wider internet coverage. The main priorities for internet coverage include banking, tele-medicine, tele-education, and humanitarian agencies’ data transfer and information dissemination.

Energization:
• The active network continues to be operationalized with fuel. In August, the daily quantities were supplied without challenges, however, transporting and distributing them in the northern areas to Wadi Gaza has not been possible.

Access:
• 50% of requests for staff to access sites were approved to undertake repairs. Northern Gaza, Gaza, and Rafah governorates are among the areas where access was not granted.

Entry of materials: 
• Entry of materials for the repairs in the Palestinian telecom networks remains to be the biggest challenge. Few shipments were allowed in August, but these represent a very small percentage of what is needed to provide the minimum level of services aspired. 
Asks to the Israeli authorities for the upcoming month
• Deconfliction: 
o for the repairs of the 3 backbone lines.
o for the repair and installation of an additional 10 mobile radio communications sites,10-15 fixed remote towers, approximately 128 fixed wireless base stations, and 85 outdoor Wi-Fi Access Points to enable wireless internet services.  
o for increasing and systemizing number of truck delivery to the northern area of the Gaza Strip for fuelling and delivering materials. 
• Approval for outstanding lists of materials. 
• Maintain consistency in the entry of fuel.