Nigeria’s Mainstreet Technologies has partnered with Tata communications for European connections onward from their Portugal landing station and other strategic locations, Business Day reports. The company has also begun construction of landing stations in Nigeria, Ghana and Portugal ahead of its scheduled commencement of operations by June 2010.
This is inline with its quest to become the second competitive cable system in the West African sub-region. It was also gathered that the cable would land in Tenerife , Morocco , Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire by making landing agreements with landing parties and these landing station partner will be announced in 2010.
BusinessDay lreports that though Main One would rely on its customers to get the capacity to the inland countries, it is constructing an inland route between Accra and Lagos with a partner to create a redundant ring and the added advantage been its ability to deliver bandwidth to Togo and Benin Republic. The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) and Main One Cable Company last week signed a loan agreement of $61 million towards the development of a submarine fiber optic cable connection along the West African coast. A statement from the bank states that, “With this investment, the Bank has further expanded its wide support for African ICT projects following investments in the East African ‘EaSSy’ submarine cable and the two satellites RASCOM and New Dawn”. Commenting on the loan agreement with ADB, Funke Opeke, chief executive officer, Main One Company indicated that “the Main One Cable system will ensure that broadband communications in West Africa is accessible and affordable. She added that ‘the investment by the AfDB in financing this enhanced access to Information Communication Technology (ICT) is an investment in the region’s economic growth.” In the same vein, Bernard Logan, commercial director for Main One Company observed that although the market for international fibre would be competitive with four new cables (Glo-1, WACS and ACE), the company is already contemplating upgrading its starting capacity from 30 gbps in June 2010, further adding the cable has an overall potential capacity of 2tbps (terabytes per second). The company claims that its cable system will contribute to an immediate 50 percent drop in the price of bandwidth in Nigeria and Ghana , and continued price reduction is anticipated over time.
ITNewsAfrica.com
