MainOne submarine nears completion

Chairman, Main One Cable Company, Mr. Fola Adeola, has announced the commencement of laying final high capacity fibre optic cable from Seixal, Portugal through the coast of West Africa to Ghana and Nigeria.

Adeola who spoke in Lagos, said the cable anticipated to go live in June 2010 is bringing the much expected international capacity into a region with explosive growth in tele-density in the past 10 years.

He also said they were pleased to achieve this major milestone within project timeline.

“We remain focused on delivering the project on schedule,” he declared.
Adeola recalled that Main One in November 2009 successfully completed the installation of the shore ends of the cable in Lagos, Nigeria; Accra, Ghana; and Seixal, Portugal.

He pointed out that the commencement of the end-to-end laying of the full stretch of the fiber optic from Portugal signifies the final stages of the ambitious project.

For the chief executive, MainOne, Ms Funke Opeke, “Now that the 7,000 kilometres trunk of the cable is being installed, we are pleased that our efforts over the last 18 months are coming to fruition.”

A wholly owned by African investors, Main One Cable Company has the support of African Finance Corporation, Nigeria; Pan African Infrastructure Development Fund, South Africa; FBN Capital, Nigeria; Skye Bank, Nigeria and Main Street Technologies, Nigeria which is the project sponsor.

She further revealed that Main One is building two landing stations in Accra and Lagos which will be complete next month.

“Equipment installation and end-to-end testing of the cable system will then follow, prior to service launch in June,” she said.

Additionally, she said, Main One would provide open access to 1.92 Terabits per second of capacity to the West African region at prices less than 50 percent of current wholesale capacity prices.

The international capacity that Main One is bringing into the West African sub-region will consolidate the explosive growth of telecommunications in the sub-region in recent years.

In addition to providing a major boost to Internet access, Main One will help to considerably minimise the difficulties of switching traffic between African countries and eliminate the inconveniences and added costs of first routing traffic to Europe.

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