Main One Cable Company has concluded the shore-end laying of its undersea fibre optic cables in Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana, respectively.
The shore-end cable laying is a critical intermediary procedure in which undersea fibre optic cables are laid on the shores of countries in which the cables are expected to berth, in preparation for the end-to-end laying of the full stretch of the fibre optic cable from its origin in Portugal.
The 1.92 terabit facility will offer the highest bandwidth in the region and cost to the consumer will be 10 times less than what currently obtains.
This comes on the heels the landing of the Glo-One cable of similar definition in Lagos weeks back. Glo-One is an initiative of Globacom Limited, Nigeria's second national telecoms operator. Glo-One is expected to be commissioned before the end of this year, while Main One is scheduled for commissioning in June next year. Both projects will provide broadband data and internet capacity, which will increase the country's Internet density and capacity. They will likewise break the quasi-monopoly  of the Nigerian Telecommunications limited (NITEL) which runs a fibre-cable monopoly, currently threatened only by Suburban Telecom which has tapped into NITELs same SAT-3 resource  from a neighbouring country and landed it in Nigeria.

Industry watchers say the kind of broadband capacity and penetration which both projects will deliver will provide a firm platform for improved services including e-government, e-commerce, distance learning projects and make it possible for teeming Nigerian professionals and others to work from home and other remote locations. It will likewise give impetus to a new vista of business opportunities including in areas of outsourced call centres. Also it will encourage the delivery of more local Nigerian content in the cyberspace and encourage more Nigerians, especially the aged and otherwise challenged individuals to engage in self employment.
Said Funke Opeke, Chief Executive Officer of Main One Cable Company, "the successful completion of our shore-end cable laying operations in Lagos and Accra, again signposts the seriousness with which this project is being executed and our commitment to ensuring that we deliver on our target completion date of June 2010."

 The successful completion of its shore-end cable laying operations is yet another formidable and transparent landmark of the progress being recorded by the pioneering undersea cable network. Main One cable was the first private company to receive submarine cable landing licenses from both the Nigerian Communications Commission and Ghana's National Communications Authority.
Main One embarked on undersea route survey operations last February and by June had concluded the survey operations. Also in June, it secured commitment from multilateral financial institutions as well as Nigerian banks for all of the financing it requires for the first phase of the cable project.
 Said Opeke, "We continue to be delighted at the steady pace of work on the Main One project." She added: "Manufacture of the specialized cable to be deployed in the entire 7,000 Kilometer route is more than 90 percent completed".
 She added that construction work on the GlobalNetwork Operating Center for the cable company, which is sited in Lagos, Nigeria is recording impressive progress in much the same way as the cable landing station in Accra, Ghana.