Orange (www.Orange.com) and MainOne Cable Company (www.MainOne.net) are pleased to announce that they have signed an agreement allowing for a major investment by Orange in the West Africa submarine cable system, MainOne. Through this partnership Orange will acquire additional capacity, thereby reinforcing its position in the African telecommunications ecosystem.
MainOne’s current cable system comprises a 7,000km submarine cable, which was launched in 2010 and has landing stations in Nigeria, Ghana and Portugal. The partnership between Orange and MainOne Company will provide for the construction and installation of two new branches and stations. These will connect the cable to Dakar in Senegal and Abidjan in the Côte d’Ivoire by mid-2019. Orange will be the owner of the cable station in Dakar. Orange’s investment represents a major milestone for this project.
Orange Marine, a 100% subsidiary of the Orange Group, has been chosen to manage the installation of these two new branches.
Connectivity, capacity & growth opportunities
Thanks to this new cable connection, local populations will 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. More specifically, this cable extension is an opportunity to improve connectivity and offer a broader range of services for both Orange Côte d’Ivoire & Sonatel. In addition, MainOne offers an alternative route that guarantees the protection of voice and data traffic passing through the other cables in the area – SAT3 WASC SAFE and ACE.
