Nigeria, Ghana and the rest of Africa are set to experience a major boost in Internet access and a hefty reduction in tariffs with the commencement of the Main One Cable Project. In what is clearly a major milestone, especially for the West Africa sub-region, Main One Cable System has acquired the first ever issued under-sea cable system landing licence in West Africa. In addition, the pioneering organisation has made the requisite contractual payments to Tyco Telecommunications which will implement both phases of the project on a turnkey basis. Work has therefore begun on the massive intercontinental sub-marine fibre optic cable project.

The Main One Cable Project is an ambitious under-sea fibre optic cable project that will extend from Portugal to the West and Southern Coasts of Africa, respectively.

The first phase of the project will span 6,900 kilometres, extending from Portugal to Nigeria and Ghana on the West Coast of Africa, while the second phase is expected to extend by another 6,000 kilometres to South Africa and Angola. Using Dense Wave Multiplexing technology of 1.28 Terabits per second with two fibre pairs, the Main One cable is designed to deliver more capacity to the region than any of the other existing or proposed under-sea fibre projects.

In addition to considerably enhancing broadband access, the Main One cable project will help to crash tariffs significantly. It will provide open access to regional telecom operators and Internet Service Providers at rates that are less than twenty per cent of current international bandwidth tariffs obtainable via SAT 3 or satellite service operators.

The Main One project will also drive job provision across the continent.

According to Funke Opeke, Main One Chief Executive Officer, “as a business championed by African entrepreneurs, Main One will encourage local continent development via skills transfer of critical networking technologies.”