Main One Cable Company Limited, the first undersea fibre optic cable company in West Africa, has signed a contract with Huawei at their Lagos office to provide interconnection equipment for Main One’s submarine cable network. The move indicates the company’s continuous investment in the latest optical networking technology and management system which provides broadband capacity in multiples for the West African market. The choice of OptiX OSN 9500 Intelligence Optical Switching System from Huawei Technology serves as the backbone platform to offer high transmission bandwidths that is revolutionary in the region. The OptiX would provide a capacity and reliability mainstream platform comparable with similar carriers in developed economies where Main One offers unprecedented services. According to Funke Opeke, chief executive officer, CEO, Main One, “Our focus is providing customers with reliable and world-class service through continuous adoption of industry-leading telecommunication solutions. Huawei’s cutting-edge OSN solutions meet our unique requirements which would help us advance network efficiency and deliver guaranteed service levels to our customers.� Opeke noted that as a leading provider of telecommunication network solution for operators in West Africa, Huawei has experience in the market since year 2000 with five branch offices covering 14 countries, serving over 50 million subscribers in the region. The company is dedicated to providing innovative and customised products and solutions to create long-term value and potential growth for its customers. The Huawei’s OSN 9500 system, which provides more flexible networking solutions with diverse

functions would facilitate and support Main One’s fast-growing broadband business. The system has been designed to specifically address major challenges that operators face in network transformation, by enabling the construction of high-performance, highly reliable, cost-efficient networks. Huawei solutions enables Main One optimise the costs of connecting its network to local operators and the solution also employs ASON, the latest failover technology to ensure single failures do not result in network outages. Furthermore, Huawei solution offers a customer-centric approach to network management which provides real-time monitoring, fault location and automatic recovery functions to strengthen the network’s smart operations. The products and solutions are deployed in over 100 countries and serve 45 of the world’s top 50 operators, as well as over one billion users worldwide. Main One is the first submarine cable company offering open access, wholesale broadband capacity in West Africa. It is also wholly African-owned with a vision to expand the much needed capacity on the African continent and reduce costs of broadband communications across the continent. The company’s vision is being realised in a 1.92 Tbps and 7000km submarine cable system scheduled for service in June 2010 with initial landing stations in Nigeria, Ghana and Portugal – connecting West Africa to the rest of the world via Portugal and the United Kingdom.