08 November 2019

MainOne has finally landed its submarine cable in Grand Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire, the final leg of the ongoing expansion to reach Senegal and the former (NAWC August/September 2019).

The landing, which follows the recent completion of the landing in Dakar, Senegal will extend the reach of the cable into Côte d’Ivoire and other west African countries.

It is also the first commercial cable in service to deploy spectrum sharing capabilities guaranteed to deepen infrastructure sharing and lower the cost of delivering broadband services to the region.

Following the landing at the Grand Bassam beach in Abidjan, the cable will be connected to an existing branching unit on the cable trunk already strategically located offshore. 

The upgrade of the electronics on the cable and the implementation of spectrum sharing functionality will now enable multiple operators to share optical spectrum on the submarine pair with up to 10 terabits of capacity.

Availability of such increments in capacity is expected to further accelerate the deployment of 4G services in addition to fixed broadband across the region.

Furthermore, the submarine cable will be connected to the newly-constructed MainOne data centre in Abidjan, purposely built alongside the cable landing station to house infrastructure to facilitate the growth of the digital economy in Côte d’Ivoire.

MainOne chief executive officer (CEO) Funke Opeke, said that the firm recognises the role that broadband infrastructure plays in driving the growth of the digital economy and economic development in the 21st Century “and are excited that we can enable these investments” in Côte d’Ivoire.

“We look forward to energising the digital ecosystem, not just in Côte d’Ivoire, but also in neighbouring countries as we bring the new submarine cable connection and Grand Bassam data centre into service,” Opeke added.