The management of leading Cable Company and telecoms Infrastructure Company (Infraco) in Nigeria, MainOne Group, has described its business activities in the ending year 2018 as eventful, revealing that “New milestones including expansion to Francophone West Africa via submarine cable extensions and new licenses in Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal, on-ground teams to manage this growth and new partnerships made the year thick after all”.
In a goodwill message to enthusiasts, the company said “As we round off 2018, we are excited to share details of our network and expansion plans in West Africa, as well as news of our latest investments. Finally, we’d like to take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year”.
“This year, we signed strategic partnership deals with Orange and TE Subcom, to extend our submarine cable into Dakar, Senegal and Abidjan – Cote D’Ivoire. These projects will enable these West African countries with reliable connectivity services at lower costs. Neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania will also benefit from this enhanced capacity.
“In Ghana, we extend our reach with new points-of-presence (PoPs) in Takoradi’s Business District and Kumasi. These PoPs join the growing number of MainOne PoPs in several locations in Ghana such as the Central Business District; Accra; Tema; Cable Station at Nungua; Spintex Road; and Legon. The reach is designed to assure our enterprise customers of more robust infrastructure to deliver best-in-class connectivity, enterprise voice, data center services, and value-added services.
“In Nigeria, MainOne is partnering with the Ogun and Edo State Governments on their digital transformation plans to build fibre infrastructure across the state capitals. In November, we launched the carrier-neutral, West African Internet Exchange (WAF-IX) with global IXP platform provider, Asteroid out of the MDXi data center.
“WAF-IX will facilitate improved interconnection and peering, allow customers connect to multiple networks, cloud and content providers, enable service providers operate more efficiently, deliver enhanced end-to-end network performance, and reduce overall IP Transit costs. One of the world’s largest, cloud network platform, Cloud Flare is already peered with WAF-IX with major OTTS and content providers getting on-board,” MainOne management noted.
The Group added further that “By demonstrating “best-in-class” cloud service capabilities and supporting local businesses in their digital transformation journey, our Data Centre subsidiary, MDXi, attained the Gold Data Centre certification from Microsoft and a re-certification from SAP.
“This Gold Data Centre certification is the highest partnership level with Microsoft in Data Centre Competencies and is the pinnacle for Cloud Productivity in Microsoft’s Partner Network program. SAP’s re-certification endorses MDXi’s ability to deliver high-quality cloud and infrastructure operations services to its customers running SAP solutions. MDXi also obtained Tier III Constructed Facility Certification (TCCF) from Uptime Institute making it the most certified TIA942, PCI DSS and ISO 27001 Certified Data Center in West Africa.
“With the on-going, nationwide network expansion in Nigeria and Ghana, as well as service delivery in 10 West African countries including Togo, Cameroun, Benin, Niger, and Chad, MainOne is making significant investments in infrastructural projects in West Africa as a push to ramp up technology penetration in the region and support the budding business ecosystem.
In a recent interview with Data Economy, the CEO, Funke Opeke shed light on the digital transformation in West Africa, MainOne’s role in this and what you should expect in the coming years.
The management also revealed that ahead of 2019 business year, “We are currently improving our processes to continue the provision of excellent customer service and will, early in 2019 launch an automated billing system. This fully automated; payment portal will enable our customers make payments easily and conveniently online from any part of the world. We continue to enhance our customer portal to provide critical information on the services we provide and as the go-to destination when our customers have inquiries about such services”.
