CAMTEL’s SAIL Infrastructure to Boost Nigeria’s Telecom Sector

By Ning Gaston in Yaounde

CAMTEL GM, SPARKWEST director, other Camtel officials during Friday’s ceremony

The Cameroon Telecommunications Company, CAMTEL has penned an agreement with Nigeria’s SPARKWEST Company Ltd for the commercialization of the intercontinental submarine cable dubbed South Atlantic Inter Link, SAIL infrastructure linking Cameroon and Brazil.

                The deal that was sealed in Yaounde Friday follows a similar agreement signed with Equatorial Guinea.

                It was CAMTEL General Manager, David Nkotto Emane who took the engagement on behalf of Cameroon while Niyi Oyedele, the Director of SPARKWEST did same for his company.

                By engaging CAMTEL via the SAIL infrastructure, Nigeria’s over 160 million telephone subscribers will now be enable to make direct calls to South and North America, it was said at the signing ceremony Friday in Yaounde.

                Until now, such calls were made via Europe and at very high costs, it was further disclosed.

                To CAMTEL’s General Manager, the signing of the agreement was a milestone with regards to the SAIL project which links the towns of Kribi in Cameroon and Fortaleza in Brazil.

                He praised the Nigerian company for committing itself to doing business with Cameroon.

                “It is a very important agreement. If you look at international traffic into Africa from America, Nigeria accounts for a minimum of 10% of the traffic. So if Nigeria accounts for that kind of volume, it means the marketing of SAIL should focus a lot on Nigerian operators,” said SPARKWEST Director, Niyi Oyedele shortly after signing the agreement.

                “A lot of Nigerians are there in South and North America. I am sure you are aware that there is nowhere in the world where you can’t find Nigerians. We have at least 20 million Nigerians in America. So SAIL is a very critical infrastructure that will make calls efficient between Nigeria, Cameroon, West and Central Africa and North and South America,” he added.

                He revealed that “until now, calls between West and Central Africa and America have had to go through Europe, with the high cost this entails. But with this engagement with Camtel, it will no longer be the case. Calls will now go directly to South America. It’s going to be more cost effective. It will be efficient because if you have to first of all go through Europe, there is what we call delay in latency. But when you go through South America to North America, it is far more efficient”.

                The South Atlantic Inter Link, SAIL, is an ambitious 6,000-km submarine cable system that connects Kribi in Cameroon with Fortaleza in Brazil.

                SAIL brings together some major names in an ocean-spanning partnership designed to boost connectivity and economic activity across two continents.

                The revolutionary infrastructure provides a direct route for data traffic from Africa to South America.