MainOne Rolls out Commercial Service

West African Submarine cable, MainOne, has commenced services in Nigeria and Ghana, providing connectivity through Portugal with the rest of the world.
The rollout of service will ensure that the much required international connectivity exists in the region where there has been an explosive tele-density in recent years but whose internet penetration remains significantly lower than other parts of the world.
Babatunde Fashola, governor of Lagos state, said that his government has taken a huge step towards making telemedicine a reality, and that broadband has been the missing link in that effort.
He explained that with MainOne cable coming rolling out service, telemedicine service will be realized. He added that the future of MainOne cable lies in the effective utilization of its services.
Dr. Bashir Gwandu, acting, executive vice chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said that the rollout of service by MainOne Cable company ahead of other initiatives has put it clearly the leader in that space. He expressed the need for operators in the industry to maximize the use of the infrastructure to meet expectations of consumers in terms of quality of service as well as tariff reduction.
He decried the difficulty faced by operators in securing ‘right of way’ approval required in building national fibre optic network which is needed to drive bandwidth from undersea cable to lastmile.
The completion of phase 1 project of MainOne cable makes available up to 1.92 terabyte of capacity that can be made accessible to clients with at least 30 gigabyte per second of it available in Lagos and Accra respectively.
“We are please to achieve completion of this major project within our timeline. We remain focused delivering broadband capacity to West Afric and opening the doors of opportunity for many in this part of the world,” Fola Adeola, chairman, MainOne Cable Company said.
The completion of MainOne is an important step towards lower cost of international communications and significant expansion of internet access via submarine cable which will in turn lead to greater efficiency and a more competitive business environment. Currently, majority of international connectivity to the region is satellite based and this poses challenges in terms of capacity and performance relative to fibre optic technology which MainOne has now deployed. MainOne will operate as an open access system providing capacity to operators and service providers in the region on a non-discriminatory basis.
Through the MainOne domain, consumers will enjoy benefits of increased bandwidth availability, affordability and reliability.