MainOne reaffirms on cable project completion

Main One Cable Company has reaffirmed determination to complete its submarine cable on schedule so as to alleviate the inconveniences currently facing Nigerians, especially on Internet access.

Managing Director, Ms Funke Opeke, gave this insight in Lagos, at the weekend, saying that the completion of the project, mostly as scheduled would see to an end to the poor internet service for the citizens of West African sub-region.

She noted that the company remains committed to complete its 7,000 kilometer transatlantic submarine cable on schedule for the middle of next year, 2010, stressing that the first phase of the massive project will extend from Portugal to Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana respectively.

Main One Cable Company, Ms Opeke said, would deploy latest technology in submarine fiber optic cabling, by way of using Dense Wave Multiplexing technology of 1.98 Terabits per second with two fiber pairs.

Main One submarine cable, she said, will deliver more broadband Internet capacity to the West Africa sub-region than any other existing or proposed undersea fiber projects.

“We remain painstaking in our determination to ensure that the first phase of the Main One cable project is concluded by mid 2010. Indeed, we are already working with our initial set of customers to plan for the interconnection of their networks to our cable system when it lands in Nigeria and Ghana,” he said.

She said, was awarded the first ever private submarine cable landing licenses by the duo of the Nigerian Communications Commission and Ghana’s National Communication’s Authority last December.

Additionally, Opeke said, Main One has since secured commitments for all of the $240m required to fully fund the transatlantic transmission cable and the various suppliers on the Main One project are working steadily towards the vital goal of on-time project completion.

“We trust that on completion, Main One cable will help to minimize the problems regularly encountered by millions of end-users in the sub-region on account of the shortcomings and occasional glitches on the pre-existing submarine cable,” she said, emphasizing that Main One will crash Internet bandwidth tariffs in the sub-region as it tariffs will be less than half of what operators currently pay for bandwidth from SAT 3 or satellite service operators.

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