MainOne Broadband Infrastructure Investments to Exceed $500m by 2020

MainOne, a leading provider of innovative telecom services and network solutions for businesses in West Africa, plans to double its investment on broadband infrastructure in the next five years.

The funding, according to Ms. Funke Opeke, chief executive officer of MainOne, may come from additional shareholder equity, loans or through a bond sale within the next five years,

MainOne, in the last five years, has invested about $300million in the region, targets the expansion of its data centers and submarine cable infrastructure in Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria as more companies move “their business model online,” Opeke said.

Companies are tapping Nigeria’s potential as a data market, with 147 million mobile-phone subscribers in Africa’s most populous nation. Nigeria wants to increase its broadband penetration fivefold from 4 percent of the population, according to its National Broadband Plan for 2013-2018.

“When you look at where the market opportunities exist in West Africa, I think if we have Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast, we have probably covered 60 to 75 percent of the market,” Opeke said.

Speaking to journalists recently as part of activities on the company’s fifth year anniversary, Opeke, said MainOne has overtime evolved from a submarine cable operator to becoming a full-service business-to-business communications services provider.

She noted that within its five years of operation, the company had made further investments in growing directly and through partnerships its fiber terrestrial network and POPs across the region and opened a Tier III Data Center, MDX-I, which was first of its kind for the region in Lagos earlier this year.

The MainOne CEO explained that since inception, MainOne’s objective has been to bridge the digital divide in West Africa and to become the preferred provider of wholesale Internet services and enabler of online business within the region.

According to her, it has achieved this with services delivered to 7 countries in West Africa, and an impressive list of 500+ major telecom operators, ISPs, government agencies, large enterprises, and educational institutions in the region on its network.

Today, MainOne has the region’s highest lit capacity on its submarine cable, and is the #1 Internet transit provider in West Africa, interconnected with the London Internet Exchange (LINX), Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMIX), Nigerian Internet Exchange (IXPN) and the Ghanaian Internet Exchange (GIX).

These achievements have opened up new business opportunities for indigenous enterprises, and positively impacted employment generation.

In her words, “Despite the challenges we face in this region, predominantly a dearth and high cost of infrastructure, we are excited about the future prospects in the broadband market and are determined to remain consistent in our resolve to bridging the digital divide between Africa and the rest of the world".

In five years, MainOne has invested over $300m in infrastructure in West Africa towards improving connectivity and data center services in West Africa. Within this period, the company has ensured to its customers highly available and reliable services with zero downtime experienced on its core submarine cable infrastructure over its period of operations.