Ms. Funke Opeke, CEO of MainOne says the company has achieved the objective of bridging the digital divide in West Africa and becoming the preferred provider of wholesale Internet services within the region. She said this in a press conference marking five years of operation. She stated that the company, which initially started as a submarine cable operator has grown to become a full-service business-to-business communications services provider.
Ms Opeke noted that within its 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.
Today, MainOne has the region’s highest lit capacity on its submarine cable, and is the #1 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). These achievements have opened up new business opportunities for indigenous enterprises, and positively impacted employment generation.
In her words, “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 $300m 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.
