Operators Scrabble for MainOne Bandwidth

Ahead of the anticipated landing of MainOne submarine cable sometime in June this year, telecommunications operators are now scrabbling for bandwidth from the undersea cable, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now reveal.
The Main One Cable is one of the undersea cable systems whose initiators are from Nigeria and geared towards addressing bandwidth challenge in the telecom sector.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed that the two terabyte bandwidth project has been subscribed to about 10 per cent of its actual capacity.
The cable system is expected to span 14,000 kilometres and provide additional capacity for international and Internet connectivity to countries between Portugal and South Africa on the west coast of Africa.
The submarine cable project is designed in two phases, both of which are scheduled for completion later this year.
The Phase 1 cable system will span 6,900 kilometres. Additional connectivity extending to Angola and South Africa will occur in the second phase of the project.
It was gathered that operators who have sealed purchase agreement with MainStreet Technologies the initiator company include, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) operators, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) among other operators.
Funke Opeke, chief executive officer, MainStreet Technologies, in an exclusive chat with Nigeria CommunicationsWeek expressed happiness with the development which she described as showing the confidence those operators have in the ability of her company to deliver the project at record time.
Main One will provide international capacity into Nigeria, a country that has experienced explosive growth in tele-density in recent years, but which remains constrained with respect to access to international cable capacity for global connectivity.
MainOne undersea cable will be competing with similar cable such as Glo 1 which has since landed in the country, South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (Sat-3) and West Africa Cable System (WACS) being pioneered by consortium of companies including MTN.