MainOne has noted an increase in demand for 3G and 4G services from customers across West Africa, and the upgrade is expected to provide additional capacity support for the delivery of high-bandwidth services, as well as a more resilient network for customers in the region.
“We are starting to see an information explosion in West Africa that has brought about a dramatic increase in network traffic this year and this has highlighted the need to scale up our network for future demand,” said Funke Opeke, CEO at MainOne.
“As a leading provider of data capacity to eight countries in West Africa, we needed to deploy more advanced technology to reliably meet our customer’s need for advanced and robust communications services. This upgrade to 100G provides MainOne the platform to further deepen broadband penetration in West Africa and meet the demands of our growing wholesale data business.”
The MainOne submarine route runs from Seixal in Portugal through Accra in Ghana to Lagos in Nigeria, with capacity to land branches in Morocco, the Canary Islands, Senegal and the Ivory Coast.
“Xtera is extremely pleased to help MainOne upgrade its subsea cable infrastructure between Nigeria and Portugal,” said Jon Hopper, CEO at Xtera.
“New capacity will be added during this upgrade by deploying our high-capacity, long-distance optical networking product, Nu-Wave OptimaTM. The use of this advanced, field-proven multi-purpose platform will allow MainOne to introduce 100G services and support the development of digital economy in western Africa.”
Earlier this year, MainOne launched a Tier-3 data centre in Nigeria.