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MainOne claims $300m investment in seven W.African countries

By Adeyemi Adepetun and Benjamin Alade
01 July 2015   |   12:06 am
TELECOMMUNICATIONS and data services company, MainOne Cables has invested over $300 million in infrastructure and services in about seven countries in the West African sub-region.
funke opeke

Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Funke Opeke

TELECOMMUNICATIONS and data services company, MainOne Cables has invested over $300 million in infrastructure and services in about seven countries in the West African sub-region.

MainOne, which celebrated five years of operation on the continent, yesterday, informed that its objective has been to bridge the digital divide in West Africa and to become the preferred provider of wholesale Internet services and enabler of online business within the region.

Speaking at a media briefing in Lagos, yesterday, the Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Funke Opeke, who said the company, initially started as a submarine cable operator to becoming a full-service business-to-business communications services provider, would be injecting additional $300 million in the business in the next few years.

Opeke noted that within its first five years of operation, the company had made further investments in growing directly and through partnerships its fiber terrestrial network and POPs across the region and opened a Tier III Data Center, MDX-I, which was first of its kind for the region in Lagos earlier this year.

She explained that since inception, MainOne’s objective has been to bridge the digital divide in West Africa and to become the preferred provider of wholesale Internet services and enabler of online business within the region.

According to her, it has achieved this with services delivered to seven countries in West Africa, and an impressive list of over 500 major telecommunications operators, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), government agencies, large enterprises, and educational institutions in the region on its network.

She disclosed that today, MainOne has the region’s highest lit capacity on its submarine cable, and is the number one Internet transit provider in West Africa, interconnected with the London Internet Exchange (LINX), Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMIX), Nigerian Internet Exchange (IXPN) and the Ghanaian Internet Exchange (GIX).

She stressed that these achievements have opened up new business opportunities for indigenous enterprises, and positively impacted employment generation.

“Despite the challenges we face in this region, predominantly a dearth and high cost of infrastructure, we are excited about the future prospects in the broadband market and are determined to remain consistent in our resolve to bridging the digital divide between Africa and the rest of the world.

“In five years, MainOne has invested over $300 million in infrastructure in West Africa towards improving connectivity and data center services in West Africa. Within this period, the company has ensured to its customers highly available and reliable services with zero downtime experienced on its core submarine cable infrastructure over its period of operations”, she stated.

MainOne explained that since its launch in 2010, it has developed a reputation for highly reliable services to become the preferred provider of wholesale Internet services to major telecom operators, ISPs, government agencies, large enterprise, and educational institutions in West Africa.

Already, MainOne has been licenced by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) as one of the Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) to provide wholesale broadband services in the Lagos region.

As an InfraCo, MainOne, like IHS, which won the North Central region license, is expected to deploy Metropolitan Optic Fibre Infrastructure and Associated Transmission Equipment on an open access, non-discriminatory, price regulated basis in the state and region respectively.

The Chief Financial Officer, Babatunde Dada, said MainOne has achieved 100 per cent Internet growth in the last five years in the area of coverage. In achieving this, he explained that MainOne has deployed over 7000km of submarine cable, built the new generation Internet Protocol (IP) networks; build 300km terrestrial fibre metro rngs in Nigeria, among others.

He also explained that till date, the submarine company services over 350 corporate customers, which cuts across telecommunications operators; oil and gas and other segment of the market. “Specifically, more than 16 of the 23 banks are being served by MainOne.

We are also in insurance and I can tell you that since we started operations, five years ago, we have only recorded only five per cent customer loss”, he added.

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