Submarine cable system underused after $1b investment

After several investments worth over $1 billion (N306 billion), the nation’s submarine cable system is still hampered by gross underutilisation.

The cost of NITEL’s South Atlantic 3 (SAT3) fibre optic cable, which now belongs to ntel, for instance is put at over $600 million. MTN’s West African Cable System (WACS) costs $650 million. ACE cable, by Dolphin Telecoms, is worth about $700 million. While MainOne gulped about $300 million, the cost of Globacom’s Glo1 cable is estimated at $800 million.

Going by the capacity of the system with bandwidth potential in excess of 19.2 terabytes and over 340 gigabytes, a revolution, as witnessed in the mobile phone segment, should have been replicated in e-governance, e-health, e-banking, e-education, telemedicine and e-security, especially at a time the country is hoping to deepen broadband penetration by 30 per cent.

Responding to The Guardian’s enquiries on the underutilisation, the President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Olusola Teniola, said there was a serious glut in the supply of bandwidth on the wet segment of the optic fibre ecosystem in the country.

Teniola, an engineer, noted: “Without data hosted locally, without local content being developed in PetaBytes, without more data centres and without prices being affordable, it is hard to see the case for a Return of Investment (ROI) until 2030 at best.”

The Guardian, November 1, 2017

 

 

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