Poor quality internet connection is a key challenge for businesses operating in Nigeria. This was a statement made by Reuters Africa. In the same report, Main One noted that
its cable can deliver more than ten times the broadband capacity of the South Atlantic Terminal (SAT-3), Nigeria’s sole existing undersea connection, and 20 times the entire satellite capacity of sub-Saharan Africa.
Main One $240 million cable has a capacity of 1.92 terabits and can accommodate 1 million MP3 downloads and 100 million voice calls per second while South Africa’s capacity is 1.28 terabits.
Main One CEO, Ms Opeke, noted that the average revenue per user (ARPU) for voice telephony in Nigeria was around $5 per month and falling. ARPU is a major indicator od profitability. The disinvestment of Multilinks in Nigeria via its parent South African company shows the level of competition in the nation.
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Intra-national communication in Nigeria is still expensive. It cost $600 per megabite to get connected from Lagos to London compared with $1,100 between Lagos and the Nigerian capital Abuja, because of the lack of a fully-developed fibre-optic network in the country, the report notes.
“We are engaging policy makers on some of the policy guidelines we think will help … so that the price of getting capacity from Lagos to Abuja for example no longer exceeds the price of getting it from Lagos to London,” Opeke said.
“We are still in a market where we are only scratching the surface and demand is insatiable,” she concluded.