English (UK) 
简体中文(中国) MainOne has announced an Open Access metro fiber infrastructure project in two states of Nigeria, with the support from Facebook. The infrastructure collaboration is part of Facebook’s efforts to connect more people to broadband internet. As part of this open access project, MainOne is building and operating approximately 750 km terrestrial fiber infrastructure in Edo and Ogun States, two of Nigeria’s fastest growing states.
Edo and Ogun are two States in the south part of Nigeria. With Benin City as its capital, the population of Edo State is approximately 8 million. Ogun State was created in 1976 and the state is bordered by Lagos State to the south, Oyo and Osun states to the north, Ondo to the east and the Republic of Benin to the west. Abeokuta is the capital and largest city in the state. The geographical location of the Ogun State gave its nickname “Gateway to Nigeria”.
These Open Access transport networks will provide metro fiber connectivity to reach more than 1,000,000 people in Benin City, Abeokuta, Sagamu and 10 other towns by connecting mobile operators’ base stations, Internet Service providers, Points of presence (POPs), and public locations including schools and hospitals.
Open Access as the name indicates is open to any service provider. The network owner builds the fiber optic infrastructure for access part of the telecommunication network and open it for other parties for use. The network owner could be a service provider by itself, but would allow its competitors too to use the network. Thus an Open Access network brings healthy competition and cooperation among service provider in the market.
The partnership between Facebook and MainOne will leverage MainOne’s strength as a wholesale telecoms infrastructure service provider with investment from Facebook and support from local regulatory and state authorities to further deepen broadband penetration in Nigeria.
Facebook is working closely with MainOne and other partners to accelerate broadband deployment. In Nigeria, Facebook brings together it’s learnings from scaling its global infrastructure with MainOne’s knowledge of the local environment to develop and test new working models for multiple operators to access common infrastructure.
