Only days after Main One opened its submarine cable network for business three Nigerian telecom providers--UAE-based Etisalat, South Africa`s MTN and Nigerian-based Starcomms--has signed on for service.
Built through a partnership with TE Subcom, Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) and Huawei, the 7,200 km Main One submarine cable system will link West Africa to Europe with landing stations in Nigeria and Ghana and branching units in Morocco, Canary Islands, Senegal and Cote d`Ivoire. Phase two of the Main One network, which will link Ghana and Nigeria with an extension to South Africa, will be completed by the end of 2011.
Delivering 1.92 Tbps speeds, the Main One cable will provide a much needed alternative international route to West Africa. Up `til now, service providers that needed to connect into West Africa had little choice but to buy capacity from the existing South Atlantic Terminal (SAT-3) cable.
Steven Evans, CEO of Etisalat Nigeria, which is in the process of doing testing on the network with plans to go live this week, said the cable will not only enable wireless operators to offer new data services, but also drive new competition in West Africa`s telecom market.
"We are working very hard at the moment to go live on the network, hopefully within the next 24-48 hours ... so that we will be one of the first people to be having broadband on the main network in Nigeria," Evans said in a Reuters article.
