Globacom on Tuesday entered into agreement with Huawei for the laying of another trans-Atlantic submarine cable to complement Glo 1.
The second submarine cable will consolidate Globacom’s ambitious plan to comprehensively transform Nigeria’s ICT landscape, and it will significantly increase broadband penetration in the country, Daily Trust can report.
Glo 2 will be laid along the Nigerian coast from Alpha Beach in Lagos where its precursor, Glo 1 has a landing station, extending to major cities in the southern part of the country, according to Globacom’s top Executive, Mr. Folu Aderibigbe.
Speaking at the signing ceremony between Globacom and Huawei in Lagos today, Globacom’s Regional Director, Technical, Mr. Sanjib Roy, said the facility will enable ultra high capacity connection to the South-South Region and the offshore oil platforms and communities.
Mr. Roy said the new cable would boost telecommunications service delivery in the country by providing economic and social empowerment for the oil producing communities as well as data consumers in the the region.
The facility will provide high speed internet connectivity for the oil platforms while boosting productivity and efficiency.
“Glo 2 will be the first submarine cable in Nigeria to land outside Lagos as the five existing submarine cables only landed in Lagos. Glo 2 will have capacity of 12 Terabits per second and will provide ultra-high speed connection to oil platforms and communities to empower data coverage and support enterprise market growth in this part of Nigeria,” Mr Roy explained.
According to him, Glo 2 would be the first to provide dedicated submarine fibre-optic cable to oil platforms to support the growth of Nigerian economy and allow oil communities to reduce their operational expenditure.
“It is also designed for further expansion southwards to Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola, among others,” said Mr. Roy.
Also speaking at the event, Mr. Li Shaowei, Account Manager, Huawei Nigeria, said “Huawei is proud to partner with Globacom to build a revolutionary submarine cable using innovative and leading technology. We believe the cable would bring a new era of digitalization to Nigerian economy.”
He noted that the Glo 2 project is very significant to the nation because Nigeria is the largest economic entity in Africa and and Globacom dominates the West African region in the continent.
“The deployment of Glo 2 will be the first in the Southern part of Nigeria and a key milestone for the telecom market in the country. We have confidence that the project will improve the data experience of Glo customers and the oil companies in the Niger Delta too,” he added.
The new cable will be approximately 850 kilometres long and will be integrated with Globacom’s existing terrestrial Backbone Network to provide additional service redundancy and boost service quality especially in Abuja and other parts of the country, the Globacom official said.
Giving more details of the cable, he said it would contain three fibre pairs. The first pair will connect Lagos directly to Southern part of Nigeria with terrestrial extension to other parts of the country for redundancy and maintenance purposes.
The second will be equipped with eight switchable Branching Units (BUs) which will deliver high capacity to offshore oil stations and communities connected directly to BUs, while the third pair will be equipped with two (2) switchable Branching Units to deliver high capacity to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
