CEO Interview Interview with Connectivity Pioneer Funke Opeke CEO, MainOne CEO Interview Interview with Funke Opeke West Africa, home to some of the fastest-growing populations in the world, was left behind in the connectivity revolution that swept the world in the 1990s and 2000s. The region was served by just one low-capacity undersea cable connection and a severe lack of terrestrial fibre optic networks until 2010. 2010, when MainOne embarked on their mission to connect Funke Opeke West Africa to the world with a submarine cable, 10 times CEO, MainOne the capacity of anything seen previously. The company’s journey has not been an easy one, presenting a range of technical, financial, and regulatory hurdles to overcome. Nearly half of all capital projects in West Africa experience delays of over six months. While the region’s most populous nation, Nigeria, offers many examples of projects that were delayed for more than two years and spent more than double their original budget estimates. MainOne’s CEO now speaks with us about their mission, their journey, and their most recent project, a new cable landing station and data centre in Ivory Coast. 2 CEO Interview MainOne Subsea Cable Portugal 7000 km, 10 TBPS Capacity Senegal Nigeria Ivory Ghana Coast Q Tell us a little about MainOne The world-class submarine cable system is the first privately owned cable in West Africa. Spanning 7000 km Founded in 2008 and launched in 2010, MainOne is a with a capacity of 10 TBPS and currently the cable leading provider of connectivity and data centre services connects Africa to Europe via a landing in Portugal and for businesses in West Africa. Over the last decade, we multiple routes to London, Paris and Amsterdam. Paired have developed a reputation for reliability and superior with a state-of-the-art IP network, new dense optic telecommunications service provision. This growing wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology reputation has made us the preferred provider of and data centre facilities, MainOne provides the capacity wholesale internet services to major telecom operators, for enterprises and smaller ISPs to enable broadband ISPs, government agencies, large enterprises, and solutions for businesses across the region. educational institutions across the region. When MainOne launched commercially in July 2010, it heralded an unprecedented crash in the wholesale At that time, there was very limited bandwidth price, dropping by as much as 80% in Nigeria. Q The company soon became the first choice and most ICT infrastructure in West Africa to reliable carrier of traffic for a majority of Nigerian and support such a business case. How did Ghanaian based telecom operators and ISPs. the MainOne story begin? MainOne set out on a mission to bridge the digital divide between Africa and the rest of the world. Our goal was to fill the huge gaps in internet infrastructure that existed across all nations in West Africa. It all began with the deployment of a landmark undersea cable from Europe to Nigeria, bringing much needed high-speed internet to the region. 3 CEO Interview MainOne Subsequent connectivity and power infrastructure Driving fibre optic connections to developments have upgraded the quality of internet businesses around West Africa service to millions of users in these regions and greatly improves broadband access. It also triggered corollary benefits, such as employment generation, increased productivity, increased access to knowledge, and improved economic opportunities for the region’s inhabitants. Another significant challenge was access to funding. Interest rates were over 30% at the time, limiting the capacity for investment in domestic infrastructure. While the regulatory, license, and permit issues, coupled with taxes and bureaucratic bottlenecks in multiple regulatory agencies, also posed significant hurdles when establishing the business. Q As you gradually drive fibre optic connections to businesses around West Africa, how has the demand for service grown and how has MainOne grown to meet that demand? MainOne has grown with the huge demand to become the leading provider of wholesale and enterprise connectivity and data centre services across the West African region, and partners with major global technology companies to deliver quality services to its customers. Q A 7000 km submarine cable The company continues to work towards bridging the connecting potential customers digital divide in the continent by increasing broadband across a wide region with rough terrain penetration through more fibre builds, data centre and limited infrastructure is no easy feat. investments, and satellite partnerships. What challenges did you face during this To meet the growing demand for managed computing pioneering start? and network services, in 2015 we commissioned MDXi, our Tier III data centre and the largest in West Africa. Prior to MainOne’s entry into the market, the limited MDXi granted direct access to MainOne’s entire undersea cable connections held back the development connectivity platform including fibre optic and internet of West Africa’s internet infrastructure. When cables backbone network access, while also providing began to land, under-developed distribution networks interconnection with all the major networks in Nigeria. meant they remained virtually stranded on the coastline, As a result organisations across the country were able unable to deliver the services required to push internet to move their key business processes online, rapidly access in-land. accelerating the evolution of a digital economy in Nigeria. One of the first major challenges we encountered came Our data centre subsidiary, MDXi, also partnered with from the lack of a metro fibre infrastructure and terrestrial Asteroid, a global IXP platform provider, to launch a cable networks in Nigeria. Such networks are necessary to carrier-neutral Internet Exchange Point for West Africa — provide access and push the traffic to various customers The West African Internet Exchange (WAF-IX). With the around the country. Our undersea cable connection objective of complementing national IXPs, the new triggered investments in metro fibre infrastructure for the Internet Exchange improves regional data traffic and country’s most populous city, Lagos, and more recently in ultimately fosters the development of a digital economy the states of Ogun and Edo. across the whole of West Africa. 4 CEO Interview Q The connectivity developments Q A decade of experience pioneering triggered by your arrival in Nigeria high quality connectivity in Nigeria are incredible. What were the next steps is significant but West Africa is a very for MainOne’s mission to spread diverse region. What challenges have you connectivity across the whole region? faced during the Ivory Coast project? In 2018, MainOne partnered with French telecoms giant, Our major challenge in the Ivory Coast was the location of Orange, for co-investment in extending its submarine the cable landing station and data centre site. Co-locating cables into two new cable landing stations in Dakar, a data centre with the landing station ensures accessibility Senegal, and Abidjan, Ivory Coast. This was the next of the data centre content to local and international nodes, logical step in our region-wide mission, the stations will but we had to find an elevated coastal location with a benefit several under-served countries in West Africa with gentle gradient. The site had to be within 5km of our beach better connectivity at lower prices as well as access to manhole but avoid salinity issues associated with coastal new services. data centres, while also offering a reliable clean power supply for rack cooling in this tropical environment. This These partnerships and infrastructure investments, in proved challenging but we eventually found the ideal spot. addition to support for technology hubs and startup companies, boldly underline MainOne’s vision for a The landing station and data centre are located close to better-connected region. The additional bandwidth these the Atlantic, built from prefabricated modules for flexibility countries gain will also boost the development of fixed and ease of expansion. The site provides an uninterruptible and mobile data to meet the increasing demands for clean power solution, ensuring a controlled internal and Internet access via 3G and 4G networks. In addition to the external environment, and built with marine grade broad benefits that mobile connectivity brings to regional equipment as standard to protect against salinity. Other economies and society as a whole. challenging requirements included IT efficiency, low OPEX, high availability, and high flexibility, which you may expect in any data centre. Abidjan, Ivory Coast Coastal Installation Cable-laying Vessel 4.96 Tbps Subsea Cable Vertiv Prefabricated Vertiv Prefabricated Cable Landing Station Modular Data Centre 5 CEO Interview Q With connectivity progressing well in Nigeria and Ghana, and new projects underway in Ivory Coast and Senegal, what Burkina Faso does the future hold for MainOne? MainOne will continue with its mission to bring internet connectivity closer for all West Africans. We are fully committed to deepening broadband access via investments in fibre infrastructure and data centres Niger across West Africa. Using our 100G international Chad submarine cable system, we aim to guarantee highly reliable connectivity to support the growing demand Nigeria for Internet access in 10 countries; Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Senegal