Expresso’s submarine cable lands in Accra
Expresso, a telecommunication service provider, on Friday launched its Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) Submarine cable station, to offer data for Internet Service Providers (ISP) and small and medium scale enterprises to boost their businesses.
The 17,000- kilometre-long fibre optic cable is expected to connect 23 countries from South Africa to Portugal, and other international gateways with a 5.12 terabyte-per second capacity to Ghana’s shores.
Speaking to journalists at the end of the launch in Accra, Mr Freddie Quainoo, Chief Commercial Officer of Expresso said the entry of ACE is to inject dynamism and innovations into the industry.
He described the current internet data penetration as very low, stressing that Ghana has the capacity to enrol additional subscription for route diversity, competitive prices for ISPs, corporate enterprises and other entrepreneurs.
Mobile internet data subscription as at the end of February stood at 8,816,161, representing 34 per cent.
Mr Quainoo said the launch was not for the purpose of mass market product but rather for business use of mobile data.
The entrance of ACE adds on to the existence of Main One, Glo1 and West African Cable System, all competitors in the industry.
It is expected that their entry would correct pricing bottlenecks in the market as well as promote fair competition and cost effective development of the telecommunication sector.
Mr Ihab Ibrahim Osman, Representative of the ACE Consortium, said the company’s presence in Ghana was a confirmation that public-private partnerships were the best solutions for fostering growth in Africa.
“Not building such resilience partnership is no longer an option for Africa if we are to strengthen the continent’s competitiveness in a volatile global environment,” he said.
Expresso has been in existence since 1995, operating under the name of Celltel; being the second mobile operator in the country at the time.
In 1998, Hutchison Telecom acquired 80 per cent of the company, improving the analogue infrastructure that was in place at that time.
The company was re-branded to Kasapa Telecom in 2003 and made a switch from an analogue network to a CDMA network to further strengthen its market position two years later.
Following the network expansion and upgrade, in November 2010 the company successfully re-branded into Expresso and is now providing unrivalled high-quality voice and data services to customers across various market segments.
Source: GNA