MainOne, Orange Seal Deal to Boost Internet Access

French Telecoms company, Orange and one of the leading West African Connectivity and Data Centre services provider, MainOne have struck a partnership that will see the French telecoms giant co-invest in two new cable landing stations in Dakar, Senegal and Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire while the broadband infrastructure provider will provide additional capacity via its 7000km cable system from Europe to Africa with landing stations in Nigeria, Ghana and Portugal, reinforcing the position of both companies in the African telecommunications ecosystem. Due to this new cable connection, several countries in West Africa would benefit from better connectivity, lower prices and access to new services.

Orange will 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, neighboring countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania will benefit from enhanced capacity.

For MainOne, the partnership underscores the company’s vision for a better connected region, its Chief Executive Officer, Funke Opeke said: “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 and believe our investments in technologically advanced subsea infrastructure will continue to liberalise the international bandwidth market, further support Orange and other wholesale customers, and ultimately result in improved digital services in the region”.