ICTworks by Inveneo

This week, the Glo 1 fiber optic submarine cable landed in Nigeria to a fraction of the Seacom hype in East Africa. And yet it could be just as transforming.

Glo 1 landing in Nigeria

The 9,800 km long cable will bring direct connectivity between West Africa and the UK, and hopefully dramatically drop prices and increase capacity for all 14 countries it touches, once its up and running. But that could be a while. 234 Next reports that Glo 1's parent company, Globacom is having trouble connecting the cable:

"We currently have challenges with the Glo-1 submarine cable. These challenges ranges from licensing issues and government policies, delay on the part of the vendor and customer (Glo) and point of termination. The challenges are being worked upon as we speak."

Regardless of its troubles, Glo 1 is a major accomplishment for West Africa, and a signal of its growing maturity. Glo 1 is the 1st time that a single African company has laid fiber optic cable from Europe - usually a consortium of companies combine resources, like with the Seacom, Teams , and SAT3 cables.

Personally, I'm always surprised at how small international fiber optic cables really are. They are tiny for all the Internet bandwidth traffic they can hold.