Paris, May 26th, 2010 — Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and Main One Cable Company Limited, owner of a new cable on the West Coast of Africa, have signed a maintenance contract for the Phase 1 of the Main One cable system, an open access submarine cable network aiming to contribute to enhance African and international connectivity.
Delivering high-speed bandwidth of 1.92 Tbit/s, the Main One cable will contribute to enabling cost-effective access to global information, data and markets in Western Africa. In Phase 1, the system will connect Portugal to Nigeria over 6,800 km with an additional landing station in Ghana. In Portugal, it will interconnect to cable systems serving other markets in Europe, the Americas and Asia.
This marine maintenance agreement will enable Main One to address the need for managing and maintaining the network at the highest level of performance delivered at the lowest operating cost. As part of the contract, Alcatel-Lucent will make available its maintenance vessels, as well as its experienced, fully trained, and certified specialist personnel.
“To ensure the continuity and quality of communications required by our customers, we need to rely on state-of-the-art cable ships capable of carrying out all aspects of cable maintenance in any weather condition,” said Bernard Logan, Main One business development executive. “Alcatel-Lucent’s experience provides us with highly skilled personnel and advanced maintenance cable ships and tools to meet our rigorous technical demands in an economically viable manner.”
“This contract further confirms Alcatel-Lucent’s leading role as marine service provider to help operators’ maintain their networks at the highest standards of service reliability for maximum end-user confidence,” said Philippe Dumont, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s submarine network activity. “Our value proposition capitalizes on our unique experience as turnkey provider, allowing us to offer a wide range of installation, maintenance and related services, which includes the Atlantic Private Maintenance Agreement, providing a unique solution fitting with the particular maintenance philosophies of individual cable owners and their needs.”
Alcatel-Lucent’s Atlantic Private Maintenance Agreement (APMA) currently maintains over 100,000km of critical submarine cable infrastructure in the Atlantic region ranging from the West coast of Africa to the Caribbean and as far north as Greenland.
Careful and experienced planning and implementation of marine operations is critical to the success and long-term reliability of a submarine cable network. The operations cover a wide range of activities throughout the life of a project. Key aspects to a successful cable installation are thorough planning on experienced and knowledgeable personnel: with 150 years of experience, Alcatel-Lucent has the in-house skills and expertise to manage even the most complex projects on a turnkey basis. These operations are performed using Alcatel-Lucent’s fleet equipped with high engine power, thrusters, and dynamic positioning to allow vessels to maintain position and work in any weather conditions. The vessels are also equipped with high-tow force heavy duty ploughs, providing a superior plough burial solution, and cable lay control systems. Automatic logs of all critical operational parameters are recorded including navigational data, speed, tension, slack, cable counter and plough data. All vessels utilize fully redundant GPS navigation and positioning systems, which will provide real time vessel positioning to an accuracy of better than +/- 10 meters.
About Main One
Main One Cable Company Limited (‘Main One’) is the first submarine cable company offering open access, wholesale broadband capacity in West Africa. Main One is 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. This vision is being realized 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.
Main One has leveraged experienced and proven world-class professionals in ensuring we get it right first time around and do so on time. We have built a state-of-the-art Network Operations Centre matching the best international standards and comparable to its global counterparts. We also have a strong management and technical team in place to ensure system reliability and constant availability backed by Service Level Agreements. Our systems are monitored 24 x 7 x 365 - every hour, every day, all year round to guarantee our customers minimum down time in service delivery. Main One Cable Company on the Internet: http://www.mainonecable.com/
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries such as defence, energy, healthcare, transportation, and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP and optics technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 15.2 billion in 2009 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.
Main One Cable Company Contacts
168B, Moshood Olugbani Street,
Victoria Island Annex,
Lagos, Nigeria.
Tel: +234-1-2801340
Fax: +234-1-2801349
E-mail: info@mainonecable.com
Website: www.mainonecable.com
Jumoke Akande +234 1 280 1340
Bernard Logan +44 1245 256 376
Alcatel-Lucent Press Contacts
Peter Benedict Tel: + 33 (0)1 40 76 5084 Peter.Benedict@alcatel-lucent.com
Francesca Cazzaniga Tel: +39 039 686 4005 francesca.cazzaniga@alcatel-lucent.com
Alcatel-Lucent Investor Relations
Frank Maccary Tel: + 33 (0)1 40 76 12 11 frank.maccary@alcatel-lucent.com
Don Sweeney Tel: + 1 908 582 6153 dsweeney@alcatel-lucent.com
Tom Bevilacqua Tel: + 1 908-582-7998 bevilacqua@alcatel-lucent.com
Tony Lucido Tel: + 1 908 582 5722 alucido@alcatel-lucent.com
