MainOne chooses Xtera for 100-Gbps submarine network upgrade

The operators of the MainOne submarine network, which serves West Africa and Europe with communications and data center services, has added 100-Gbps optical wavelength capabilities on its undersea cable route between Nigeria, Ghana, and Portugal. The upgrade comes via the Nu-wave Optima optical transport system from Xtera.

The MainOne Submarine Cable System runs from Seixal in Portugal through Accra in Ghana to Lagos in Nigeria. It also has capacity to land branches in Morocco, the Canary Islands, Senegal, and Ivory Coast. The cable system, which now features an upgradable capacity of over 10 Tbps, opened for business in July 2010 (see "Pioneer Consulting awarded MainOne contract").

The upgrade comes as MainOne responds to increasing bandwidth demands, primarily Internet access via its customers' 3G and 4G networks.

"We are starting to see an information explosion in West Africa that has brought about a dramatic increase in network traffic this year and this has highlighted the need to scale up our network for future demand," explains Funke Opeke, MainOne's CEO. "As a leading provider of data capacity to eight countries in West Africa, and with the pending integration of our NigerCam system to Cameroun and Nigeria's South-South region, we needed to deploy more advanced technology to reliably meet our customer's need for advanced and robust communications services.

"This upgrade to 100G provides MainOne the platform to further deepen broadband penetration in West Africa and meet the demands of our growing wholesale data business," he concludes.

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