The Main One Cable Company, Nigeria’s top submarine fibre-cable operator, has revealed plans to spread its network to neighbouring West African states through terrestrial cables.
The company said in a statement that it has already expanded its network to Togo via an interconnection through Ghana ahead of the planned rollout across the rest of the region.
According to Main One’s country director Joseph Odoi, discussions are underway with Burkina Faso’s national exchange carrier Onatel Senegalese telecoms operator Sonatel over partnerships to ensure effective fibre-cable connections and operations.
“We are connected into West Africa’s Internet highway,” Odoi said. “Main One’s connection into Togo is via NCBC and MTN’s West African Terrestrial networks. The challenge has been the francophone divide. We have built strong relationships with Togotel, Onatel and Sonatel.”
Main One is committed to building a regional network to deliver higher quality services with a lower data cost and voice communications for enterprises and businesses operating across regional offices, Odoi added.
According to Main One, it has already connected Internet Exchange Points in Ghana and Nigeria to encourage local partnership. This would in turn allow service providers in the two countries to interconnect with one another.
“This is very critical to reduction of communications cost,” said Odoi. “This is because there is no need for carrying local traffic to a distant handover point and back again. There is no charge for local traffic exchange.”
Main One Cable Company’s chief executive officer Funke Opeke said that the project has boosted business operations in Nigeria and Ghana.
She noted that the two countries are the main pillars in propelling economic growth in West Africa, whose sum gross domestic product (GDPs) grew by 6.2 percent in 2011.
Main One Cable is a communications services firm that offers local and international connectivity and broadband capacity to countries in West Africa.
It claims to be the first privately-owned submarine cable comprising 7,000 kilometres along the West African coastline.
The firm has a state-of-the-art IP-NGN platform that aims to stir Internet adoption and offer communication services to Internet service providers (ISPs), businesses and government institutions across West Africa.
