First Of It’s Kind…Glo To Connect All Oil Platforms, Communities With New Submarine Cable

The nation’s oil platforms on all the communities hosting them are to be connected to the multi-billion naira fibre optic submarine able being built by fully integrated telecommunications services provider, Globacom.

The project, named Glo2, is yet another pacesetting stride by the giant telecommunications company in its bid to transform the ICT landscape in Nigeria.

Unveiling the project at a contract-signing ceremony between the national operator, Globacom, and global telecom solutions vendors, Huawei, on Tuesday at a colourful ceremony held at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, Globacom’s Regional Director, Technical, Mr. Sanjib Roy, said the submarine cable would be built along the Nigerian coast from Alpha Beach in Lagos, where Glo 1 landing station is located, to Southern Nigeria.

According to him, in addition to boosting telecommunication service delivery in the country, the Glo 2 facility will enable ultra high capacity connection to South-South Region and provide capacity to offshore oil platforms and the communities, thus providing economic and social empowerment to the communities in the oil rich region of the country.

The submarine cable is expected to provide high speed internet connectivity as well as digitalize oil platforms to improve productivity, upload data to remote oil platforms at the speed of light.

“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,” Mr Roy explained.

The first of its kind in the country, Roy explained that Glo 2 would to provide dedicated submarine optical fiber to oil platforms to support the growth of Nigerian Economy and allow Oil Communities to reduce their operational expenditure. “It is also designed for further expansion southwards to Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola, among others,” he added.

Glo2, Mr. Roy further explained, would enable high capacity connections between oil companies’ offices onshore and their offshore locations. “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.

Explaining the operational modalities of the facility, he said that the cable would contain three fiber pairs, with the first pair connecting Lagos directly to 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, while the third pair will be equipped with two (2) switchable Branching Units to deliver high capacity to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.

Glo2 complements the Glo 1 international submarine cable built by Globacom in 2010. It is the only international submarine cable in Nigeria managed end to end, from Lagos to London, by one Company and currently provides sufficient bandwidth for the West Africa sub-region.

Also speaking on the project, Mr Li Beifang, Managing Director of Huawei Nigeria said that “Huawei is proud to partner with Globacom to build a revolutionary submarine cable using innovative and leading technology. We believe the cable would bring a new era of digitalization to Nigerian economy”.