MainOne: West Africa’s internet connectivity giant meets its match

A few weeks ago, Nigeria’s telecoms regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) announced that six companies will be required to submit their annual financial statements. 

The NCC said that this would help maintain healthy competition in the telecoms sector.

Four of those companies came as no surprise. There is little doubt that the quadruplets of MTN, Airtel, Globacom and 9Mobile are four of the most important companies in the sector. These are consumer-facing businesses and the vast majority of Nigerians enjoy services from one of them. 

The fifth company, IHS Nigeria, is not customer-facing but is known to anyone who has walked past a telecoms mast built, maintained and branded by IHS.

The last company, MainOne Cable Company, operates mostly as a business-to-business company (i.e transacts with businesses, not consumers). 

The company was created in 2008 to provide faster internet speeds in Nigeria. It constructed fibre optic cables to transport