MainOne connects Ivory Coast and Senegal with Subcom's WSS ROADM

Two new branches of the MainOne Cable System are ready for service. The branches, which extend from the MainOne omnibus cable between Seixal, Portugal, and Accra, Ghana, have landing stations in Dakar, Senegal, and Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast, and are connected to MainOne’s 7,000km cable system, which runs from Portugal to Nigeria.

Both branches utilize SubCom’s SL17-A1 cable on the system and is designed to maximize flexibility of wavelength distribution between landing stations. The branches use SubCom’s undersea WSS ROADM technology and a spectrum sharing solution on the omnibus fiber pairs to achieve wavelength distribution.

Subcom says the use of the WSS ROADM technology is not only a first for Africa, but the first to be put into service in a system, worldwide. The WSS ROADM, when applied along with the terrestrial ROADM functionality in Ghana, provides MainOne with direct transmission between the new landings and all of the previous landings, including Lagos, Nigeria. Furthermore, the system has a protected, diverse terrestrial route with automatic protection switching between the cable landing station (CLS) and the PoP in the Ivory Coast.

“We’re very pleased to have completed the MainOne branch extensions, utilizing some of our new technology to provide more network flexibility,” said Debbie Brask, VP Project Management at SubCom.