Globacom Ready to Digitalise Offshore Nigeria to Boost Economy

Signs MoU with Huawei

Globacom said it has perfected plans to digitalise Nigeria oil communities.

The telecommunication company told newsmen in Lagos that it would land new submarine optic fibre cable- Glo 2- at the South-South region of the country for the project.

Globacom’s Regional Director, Technical, Mr Sanjib Roy,

said the company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) with Huawei technologies to deliver on the multi-million dollar project within the next 18 months.

The submarine cable, the Director said, would wind round the Nigerian coast from Alpha Beach in Lagos, where Glo 1 landing station is located, to the South-South Nigeria where capacity would be provided to offshore oil platforms and host communities.

“The New submarine cable will be approximately 850 kilometres long and will be named Glo2. The cable will be integrated to Globacom’s existing terrestrial Backbone Network to provide additional service redundancy, especially Abuja and other parts of the country.”

Globacom’s Executive Director, Legal, Mrs Gladys Talabi; Mr. Folu Aderibigbe of Globacom, and Deputy Managing Director, Huawei Technologies, Mr Li Shaowei, at a contract-signing ceremony between the two companies on the construction of Glo 2, a multi-billion naira optic fibre submarine cable on Tuesday at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.

He further said, the Glo 2 project would technically boost telecommunication service delivery in the country and add to the economic and social empowerment of the communities in the oil producing regions.

“Glo2 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 12Terabit 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.”

“While the cable would contain three fiber pairs, with the first pair connecting Lagos directly to the 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, with the third pair equipped with two (2) switchable Branching Units to deliver high capacity to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.”

According to the Globacom official, the Glo2 project has also been designed to connect Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola, among others in high capacity connections between oil companies onshore and offshore locations.

“The new project complements the Glo 1 international submarine cable built by Globacom in 2010 which is the only one of its kind in Nigeria managed end to end, from Lagos to London, by a single business concern and currently supplies sufficient bandwidth to the West African sub-region,” he said.

According to Huawei Technologies, represented by Peng Shengwen said the upgrade of the submarine cable would bring a new era of digitalization to Nigerian economy.

“We would deliver the project before the next 18 months,” he added.