(Business in Cameroon) - After the optic fibre submarine cable landing points SAT3, installed in Douala, and the West Africa Cable System (Wacs), installed in Limbé, Cameroon intends to use the fibre optic submarine cables Main One, installed on the West African coast and owned by the Main One Cable Company Limited.

Funke Opeke (photo), CEO of Main One and Jean-Pierre Biyiti bi Essam, Minister of Post and Telecommunications, signed a Memorandum of Understanding in that regard in Yaounde on 14 August 2012 . According to the Minister of Post and Telecommunications, «the two sides are committed to working together to enable Cameroon to have a new point of landing for the flow of its international electronic calls traffic ».

With three submarine fibre cable landing points, Cameroon intends to increase the Internet connection speed and reduce the costs of access to electronic communication services.

Cameroon has been connected to the SAT 3 cable since 1999. Since the said cable will soon be saturated, there are plans to diversify its sources of connection. Thus, on 29 June 2012 Minpostel signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the MTN International group with a view to using the WACS optic fibre submarine cable.

Discussions concerning its exploitation are in progress between the two sides. Lucien Nana Yomba, who was then Minpostel director of infrastructure and ICT access networks explained that «the Cameroonian legislation unequivocally separates service activities from transport activities. Since MTN Cameroon is a service operator, it cannot be a client of the common entity that will then be set up».

Main One Cable Company Limited, abbreviated as Main One, which entirely belongs to Africans, is the first submarine cable company to provide open access capacities in West Africa. Its submarine cable network has a speed of 1.92 Tbps covering 7000 km. According to information available on its website, Main One has landing points in Morocco, Côte d'Ivoire, Canary Islands and Senegal. It is also present in Nigeria, Ghana and London.

BOD