In October, 2019, MainOne extended its 7000 km long submarine cable connecting Africa to Europe to the coast of Grand-Bassam with a vision to expand access to broadband Internet in Côte d'Ivoire and neighboring countries.

Following the approval of the required licenses subsequent authorizations from competent national authorities in 2018, the effective landing of the submarine cable from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean to the beach chamber located in Grand-Bassam took place on Thursday, the 3^rd of October 2019.

Impact of the submarine cable landing in Côte d'Ivoire

1. Increase in international capacity supply

The presence of MainOne's submarine cable in CIV with an initial capacity of 100Gbps scalable to 1Tbps has substantially increased the supply of Internet capacity available in the country. That increase in supply had the immediate consequence of lowering the prices of international capacity on the Ivorian market.

2. Improvement of the quality of service

MainOne's submarine cable has provided 100% uptime since its launch in Côte d'Ivoire. This level of availability, which is the highest on the market, guarantees seamless broadband Internet access for Ivorians all the time.

3. Connectivity environment open to all

The MainOne submarine cable landing station offers a neutral connectivity environment accessible to all operators for access to international capacity and to promote interconnection between the different networks in Côte d'Ivoire. To date, all the leading mobile and Internet operators in Côte d'Ivoire are interconnected to the MainOne cable station at VITIB.

4. Datacenter directly connected to the Internet source

MainOne has built a technologically advanced modular neutral data center directly connected to the submarine cable landing station.  This data center provides local hosting of data for consumers in Cote D’Ivoire, as well as low latency to connect with other global data centers via the MainOne cable system. The MainOne data center offers colocation services with the highest level of availability on the market in the best connectivity environment.

5. Activation of the sub-regional Internet exchange point

Following its connection to the national Internet exchange point CIVIX, MainOne activated access to its sub-regional Internet exchange point, WAF-IX, which allows local operators to access sub-regional content and international hosted in MainOne’s data center in Nigeria.  

6. Regional integration between the French-speaking and English-speaking countries

The landing of the MainOne submarine cable in Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, and Côte d'Ivoire establishes a real communication bridge between the Francophone and Anglophone countries in ECOWAS thus strengthening sub-regional economic integration.

MainOne has opened direct routes to Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon.

We would like to thank the Ivorian Authorities, stakeholders, partners and customers for trusting us and giving us the opportunity to support the development of the digital economy in the region through investment in infrastructure.

www.mainone.net / info@mainone.net