SUBMARINE CABLE- MAIN ONE CABLE THE TRAIL BLASER.

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By Tayo Adelaja

Published: June 16, 2010

PRESS RELEASE

SUBMARINE CABLE- MAIN ONE CABLE THE TRAIL BLASER.

The concept of wiring two continents together is far older than most people might know. Telegraphers on both sides of the ocean took up a Shakespearean line from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” where Puck says, “I’ll put a girdle `round the earth in forty minutes.”

The story really began in 1795 when a Spaniard named Salva suggested the idea of underwater telegraphic communication. But nothing significant happened until 1850 when a single wire cable manufactured by the Gutta Percha Company was laid between England and France. International telecommunications had started.

The truth is that in 1858, nobody knew what Ohm’s Law really was (in fact, Georg Ohm had been ridiculed by many of his peers for suggesting his “law”); nobody knew what would happen to an electrical pulse in a piece of wire thousands of miles long, and nobody had an inkling of knowledge about any differences in potential between two points on the surface of the earth thousands of miles apart…all of which added up to the transmission of signals so feeble and slow that this cable was doomed to commercial, if not physical failure.

Unfortunately, the first cable did not last very long – on the night after it was connected a French fisherman caught the cable and cut a length out of it. A heavier armoured cable with four conductors was successfully laid the following year. For the first time two countries separated by sea were able to communicate by means of the electric telegraph.

   A boom in the laying of submarine cables followed. Many cables were placed in service across the Irish Sea, the North Sea, the Mediterranean and even the Black Sea.

    The greatest challenge at that period was the laying of the first Trans-Atlantic cable. It is hard now to realise just what an enormous task this was. The 2,500 miles (4025km) of cable took a total of 20,500 miles (33,000km) of copper wire for the conductor, and the outer sheathing took 367,000 miles (590,500km) of iron wire. The total length of wire used was enough to go round the world thirteen times.

   The cable was loaded into two specially converted warships, one British and one American. The laying of the cable from the USS Niagara, steaming west from Ireland lasted only a few days. After 300 miles (482km) the cable snapped.

   A second attempt with laying commencing in mid-Atlantic suffered the same fate. But on the third attempt, despite some very rough weather, luck – and the cable – held, and in August, 1858 the Old World and the New were joined telegraphically if only for a short time. The cable failed on September 1, and it was not until July, 1866, that the first really successful Atlantic cable was laid by the S.S. Great Eastern.

   Cables multiplied. News which had previously taken up to six months to reach distant parts of the world could now be relayed in a matter of hours; in 1902 the “All Red” route was completed.

   This consisted of a series of cable links across the Pacific Ocean, connecting New Zealand and Australia with Vancouver and through the Trans-Canada and Atlantic lines to Europe.

In both WWI and WWII, an accepted act of war was to cut the enemy’s submarine telegraph cables, splice onto them, and run them ashore to your own cable station — and *keep* the captured cable after the war. Germany lost its cables to the U.S. in both World Wars that way, while the Allies cut Japanese cables throughout the Pacific, and only put them back together after the wars.

 In 1956 the first submarine cable incorporating repeaters came into operation across the Atlantic. With a capacity of 36 two-way voice channels, each capable of subdivision into a number of telegraph channels, TAT-1 as it was called, demonstrated the great potential of this new form of telecommunications and triggered an explosion in public demand for international telecommunications facilities.

By December 1961, the first link, CANTAT-1 providing 80 two-way voice circuits had been opened between Britain and Canada, and by July 1 962 Australia and New Zealand were in communication through the first stage of the second link, COMPAC. In December of the same year the second stage from Auckland to Fiji was opened. The laying of the final stages, Fiji to Hawaii and Hawaii to Canada soon followed and the completed COMPAC cable was opened on December 3, 1963.

   Although these new telecommunications systems were created to satisfy a demand, they in turn created heavier demands and a vast network of cables has been laid beneath the seas of the world.

   In 1975 the 480 circuit TASMAN Cable was completed to Australia. ANZCAN Cable, which replaced COMPAC Cable, was the last of the Pacific Ocean analogue cables to be installed to Australia. A-I-S Cable which lands at Perth, WA is of the same design as ANZCAN Cable and was the last of Telstra’s analogue cables to be installed. All cables installed since A-I-S have been of fiber optic design.

The entrance of Main One Cable Company comes at an opportune time to unlock the constrained West African telecommunications market and catalyze the economic potential of the region. The Main One Project is a massive and very ambitious cross-continental sub-marine fiber network that will digitally connect Africa with the rest of the world. The Main One project, whose total cost amounts to about USD 240 million, involves the laying of 7,000 kilometers of submarine fiber optic cable between Seixal (a suburb of Lisbon) in Portugal, Accra in Ghana, and Lagos in Nigeria. The system includes subsequent branching units to the Canary Islands, Morocco, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire. The 1.92 Tbps of available bandwidth will be leased wholesale to telecom operators and internet service providers on an open access basis, thereby encouraging competitive pricing and a large customer base.

The celebration of the final splice of the Main One submarine cable, a project financed in part by the African Development Bank (AfDB) through its private sector window, was held on Wednesday, 19 May 2010 at the Tema Port in Ghana.

The project has from inception been singularly distinguished by a strict conformity with expressly stated project timelines. All major historic milestones have conformed to earlier projections.

In 2008, the Main One project carried out all necessary desk-top research and applied for the requisite survey and operational permits. Among other activities, it also applied for and successfully obtained the first ever submarine cable landing licenses to be issued in Nigeria and Ghana, respectively.

Main One obtained the necessary marine survey permits in January 2009 and commenced marine route survey operations afterwards. In May, it began cable manufacturing alongside the manufacture of Repeater Assemblies.

By June, Main One had concluded its marine survey operations. It also commenced the construction of its cable landing stations in Accra, Ghana and Lagos, respectively based on designs earlier sourced in March and finalized in May. In Seixal, Portugal where the cable terminates, it is landing in an existing cable station with VSNL.

Still in June, the post survey route was reviewed and the final cable route, engineered. Very importantly, Main One Cable Company secured commitments for all of the $240million (two hundred and forty US Dollars), required to fully fund the first phase of the project.

This landing marks the successful completion of phase one of this project.

There is growing evidence that ICTs play a critical role in social development, particularly in sectors such as health, education, and agriculture and for addressing the Millennium Development Goals. The Main One project is expected to create hundreds of thousands of new Internet users who will be able to engage in e-learning, e-commerce, and online social networking. Better access to information enhances the people’s health, skills, employability, and their overall quality of life.

Main One is an important step towards lower cost of international telecommunications and significant expansion of internet access via submarine cable, which will lead to greater efficiency and more competitive business. Through the Main One project, Ghana and Nigeria will increase bandwidth availability, affordability, and reliability, which will reduce the cost of doing business, lead to job creation and create favorable conditions for higher real economic growth. The project will lead to the creation of new service-oriented businesses in the ICT sector, such as call centers, and innovative-instant messaging businesses such as mobile-based money transfers.

The cable, which goes live in June 2010, is bringing the much-expected international capacity into a region whose explosive growth in tele-density in recent years has been blighted by sub-optimal global connectivity.

In addition to the submarine operations, Main One is building two landing stations in Accra and Lagos which will be complete next month. Equipment installation and end-to-end testing of the cable system will then follow, prior to service launch in June.

Main One will provide open access to 1.92 Terabits per second of capacity to the West African region at prices less than 50 percent of current wholesale capacity prices.

The international capacity that Main One is bringing into the West African sub-region will consolidate the explosive growth of telecommunications in the sub-region in recent years. In addition to providing a major boost to Internet access, Main One will help to considerably minimize the difficulties of switching traffic between African countries and eliminate the inconveniences and added costs of first routing traffic to Europe.

The Main One Cable Company is wholly owned by African investors – African Finance Corporation, Nigeria; Pan African Infrastructure Development Fund, South Africa; FBN Capital, Nigeria; Skye Bank, Nigeria and Main Street Technologies, Nigeria, which is the project sponsor.

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