MainOne Cable Company signed supply contract with TE SubCom in September 2018 to extend the MainOne submarine cable system with two additional branches connecting Senegal (Dakar) and Cote D’Ivoire (Abidjan). SubCom will light the new branches with Ciena’s transmission equipment, which enables this flexibility and higher capacity. It is also an industry first for the deployment of undersea spectrum-sharing in Africa.

With this development, MainOne cable system will have landing points in five markets – Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire and Portugal. MainOne cable system can seamlessly extend to Cameroom, by interconnecting with the Nigeria-Cameroon Submarine Cable System (NCSCS cable system) at the MainOne cable landing station in Lagos, Nigeria. MainOne cable reaches major data centers in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt from Seixal cable landing station in Portugal via Tata Communications’ European and Transatlantic networks.

The MainOne cable system runs 7000km from Seixal in Portugal to Lagos in Nigeria, launched for service in July 2010, being the first privately-owned subsea cable to bring open-access broadband capacity in West Africa. 

MainOne Cable Company also partnered with Orange for the MainOne extension to Senegal and Côte d’Ivoireand. Orange did a major investment in the MainOne submarine cable system in 2018. Orange will be the owner of the cable station in Dakar, Senegal. 

MainOne also secured C1B license in Cote d’Ivoire in April 2018. The C1B license enables MainOne land its MainOne submarine cable and build transmission infrastructure in Cote d’Ivoire.

The new branches will be equipped with SubCom’s WSS ROADM technology that allows MainOne and its partners to match the capacity in each branch to the market need, thus optimizing cable utilization. SubCom will light the new branches with Ciena’s transmission equipment, which enables this flexibility and higher capacity. It is also an industry first for the deployment of undersea spectrum-sharing in Africa.

MainOne extension to Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire is expected to be completed by November 2019, upgrading the MainOne cable system to a potential capacity of 10Tbps.