Rinchi
TechInAfrica — MainOne and TE SubCom, a TE Connectivity Ltd company and undersea communications technology secured a contract to extend submarine cable system into West Africa’s francophone region. Besides West Africa’s there will be two more additional branches: Senegal (Dakar) and Cote D’Ivoire (Abidjan).
The two branches, Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire will be connected by MainOne’s 7,000km cable system. The cable system also extends from Portugal to Nigeria and will inject a new technology that can upgrade the system to the capacity of 10TBps starting from November next year, when the subsea system turns operational.
The development of the cable system allows MainOne to have landing points in five markets including Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire, and Portugal, and Cameron in addition. The francophone countries in West Africa that also have an increased demand for advanced telecom services are Burkina Faso, Mali, and Mauritania. These countries will also experience the benefit of these extensions of cable system into Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal.
The MainOne’s Regional Executive for West Africa, Kazeem Oladepo said: “As MainOne keeps continue on leading the current digital transformation regionally, we want to provide affordable connectivity to generate economic development. Our goals are focused on bridging the digital divide between West Africa and the global world. Our mission is to continue on investing significantly in projects to boost broadband access in order to help local business to overcome challenges in procuring capacity at competitive rates. By this cable system reaching Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire, it will ultimately increase the regional economic development.”
“These enhancements at least gives two additional connectivity options to the fast-growing region. To achieve dynamic capacity management in granting the region’s burgeoning demand, MainOne chose SubCom’s industry-leading WSS ROADM technology.”Says the Vice President, Project Management of TE SubCom, Debbie Brask.
Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire will be equipped with TE SubCom’s WSS ROADM technology. The technology allows MainOne and the partners to balance the capacity in each branch to the market need. As a result, MainOne will optimize cable utilization. The new branches will be set up with Ciena’s transmission equipment. It enables flexibility as well as higher capacity.
The submarine cable system by MainOne will ultimately link West Africa with Europe where it offers ultra-fast broadband and runs from Seixal in Portugal to Lagos in Nigeria. The system was first introduced in 2010 and has become first privately-own subsea cable that offers open-access broadband capacity in West Africa.
