Increased access and connectivity, lower cost expected
Ben Uzor Jr
The commercial launch of Main One Cable yesterday has opened a new era in Nigeria’s internet access market, with promises of new terabits up-grades that beat analysts’ expectations and have begun to erase doubts that the cable company has its noose ahead in the crucial share of cable market. This comes after over 15 years of snail speed internet connectivity.
“This is an important step towards lower costs of international communication and significant expansion of internet access”, says Funke Opeke, chief officer, Main One Cable. As stakeholders gathered at the launch, the firm’s commercial director, Bernard Logan, announced plans for the provision of outstanding 4.92 terabits per second of bandwidth. The outstanding provision will push well above the broadband capacity of existing competitors. The firm had earlier pledged to offer 1.9 terabits of international capacity. It was gathered that ten operators have already signed up with Main One for capacity.
Leading the pack, BusinessDay learnt, is Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) provider, MTN Nigeria, Etisalat Nigeria, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operator, and Starcomms Plc. As at today, 40 gigabits of bandwidth is already available to the Nigerian market. Experts declared that the completion of the project was an important step towards lowering the cost of international communications and improving internet speeds.
Most of them agreed that the emergence of the cable system will have a multiplier effect on the Nigerian economy as it would boost the adoption of new and emerging technologies such as IPTV ( Internet Protocol Television), LTE (Long Term Evolution), VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), among others. According to them, the commencement of commercial services would go a long way in ushering in the much anticipated broadband boom Nigerians have been yearning for.
“We clearly see the cost of international communications coming down, and the cost of internet access coming down”, Funke told the audience, which included the Lagos governor, Babatunde Fashola, and the acting executive vice chairman of the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), Bashir Gwandu.
“We just talked about getting information to your trading partners for example. So, now, the cost for you to do that should come down, the speed and reliability at which you should do that is much improved”. Funke was also hopeful that the cost of doing business in Nigeria will come down with the cable on ground. “For industries looking for technology, looking for partners, looking to source offshore, they have the ability to access any global market off the internet and source for the most competitive. It really opens up tremendous opportunities for the economy”, she further explained.
Commenting on the commission’s contribution towards the actualisation of the project, Bashir Gwandu, the NCC executive stated: “At NCC, when Funke came to us for license, we cut down the price. We normally give out licences for $50 million for international gateway. We brought it down to $25 million. What we are seeing here today is a huge change in terms of reducing the price of internet services. The task before us is to make sure we maximise the use of that cable. We want to see broadband prices going down for Nigerian consumers”.
“This is a dream unfolding for me because when I came back to Nigeria in 2006, some of the things I mentioned are actually happening today. I called on the industry at the time to start thinking of deploying optical fibre, not only to international links but also to national links and local loops. This is just the beginning. We all know what we have been going through with SAT-3; we are now beginning to see a difference. Main One is clearly leading the race. There are two more cables coming on board but the clear leader is Main One. There are also other cables like Glo-1 and WACS coming to the shores of Nigeria. All these are in answer to some of the calls we have made”, he said.
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