The French Telecoms company, Orange and leading West African Connectivity; and Data Centre services provider, MainOne have signed an MoU to boost Internet access in francophone countries in the West Africa sub-region.The Chief Executive Officer of MainOne, Funke Opeke, said in Abuja that the agreement was recently signed in France.
The partnership deal, according Opeke, would see Orange co-invest in two new cable landing stations in Dakar, Senegal and Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire, while MainOne would provide additional capacity via its 7000km cable system from Europe to Africa with landing stations in Nigeria, Ghana and Portugal.
This, according to the statement, would reinforce the position of both companies in the African telecommunications ecosystem.
It added that with the new cable connection, several countries in West Africa would benefit from better connectivity, lower prices and access to new services.
It added that Orange would benefit from multiple Terabits per second of additional bandwidth for the development of fixed and mobile data in Africa to meet the increasing demands for internet access via 3G and 4G network.
“More specifically, this cable extension is an opportunity to improve connectivity and offer a broader range of services for both Orange Côte d’Ivoire & Senegal’s Sonatel.
“In addition, neighbouring countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania will benefit from enhanced capacity,” the statement said.
It quoted Opeke as saying that the partnership underscored the company’s vision for a better connected region.
“MainOne continues to lead the digital transformation of our sub-region by investing in affordable connectivity to drive economic development. Our objective is to bridge the digital divide between and within West Africa and the rest of the world.
“We are committed to deepening broadband penetration across West Africa.
We believe our investments in technologically advanced subsea infrastructure will continue to liberalize the international bandwidth market.
“It will further support Orange and other wholesale customers, and ultimately result in improved digital services in the region,” Opeke added.
The statement quoted the Chief Executive Officer of Orange Middle East and Africa, Alioune Ndiaye, as saying that the development of new digital services in Africa had fostered huge social and economic developments over the past few years.
The MainOne Submarine Cable System links West Africa with Europe, bringing ultra-fast broadband in the region.
It runs from Seixal in Portugal through Accra in Ghana to Lagos in Nigeria, with capacity to land branches in Morocco, Canary Islands, Senegal, and Cote D’Ivoire.
The cable system, which now has an upgradable capacity of over 10 TBPS, first went live in July 2010, becoming the first private subsea cable to bring open-access, broadband capacity to West Africa.
