engineering

Main One

Main One is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Main One rather than just read about it. In short: The Main One Cable is a submarine communications cable stretching from Portugal to South Africa with landings along the route in various west African countries. On April 28, 2008, it was announced that Main Street Technologies has awarded a turnkey supply contract for the Main One Cable System to Tyco Telecommunications.

Key takeaways

Main One belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Main One to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Main One from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Main One Cable is a submarine communications cable stretching from Portugal to South Africa with landings along the route in various west African countries. On April 28, 2008, it was announced that Main Street Technologies has awarded a turnkey supply contract for the Main One Cable System to Tyco Telecommunications. The cable system spans 14,000 km and provides additional capacity for international and Internet connectivity to countries between Portugal and South Africa on the west coast of Africa. The submarine cable project was designed in two phases, both of which were scheduled for completion in May 2010. The dual fiber pair, 1.28-Tbit/s, DWDM project connects Nigeria, Ghana, and Portugal in Phase 1 with onward connectivity through Portugal to Europe, Asia and the Americas. The Phase 1 cable system spans 6,900 kilometres. Additional connectivity extending to Angola and South Africa occurred in the second phase of the project. Main One provides international capacity into a region that has experienced explosive growth in tele-density in recent years, but which remains constrained with respect to access to international cable capacity for global connectivity. The system is being developed by Main Street Technologies headquartered in Lagos. An October 10, 2008 press release states that the desk top study and engineering for the system has been completed. On July 22, 2010, the cable was launched. MainOne also owns a data centre subsidiary, MDXi which builds and operates Tier III data centres across West Africa. Project management and engineering for the cable system has been contracted to specialist undersea consulting firm, Pioneer Consulting. The Chief Executive Officer of Main One is Funke Opeke.

Path

The Main One Cable is an undersea cable system stretching from Portugal to South Africa with landings along the route in various west African countries.

Landing points The Main One cable system has the following landing points in operation in July 2010:

Seixal, Portugal Accra, Ghana Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria planned landing points for phase 2 are:

Casablanca, Morocco Tenerife, Canary Islands Dakar, Senegal Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire Bonny, Nigeria Libreville, Gabon Boma, Democratic Republic of the Congo Luanda, Angola Cape Town, South Africa Swakopmund, Namibia

Impact Main One provides international capacity into a region that has experienced explosive growth in tele-density in recent years, but which remains constrained with respect to access to international cable capacity for global connectivity. The Main One Cable system provides open access to regional telecom operators and Internet service providers at rates that are less than 20% of current international bandwidth prices in the region available via SAT3 or satellite service providers, according to the project's organizers. Main Street says it will encourage local content development via skills transfer of critical networking technologies and job creation with the location of the network operational center (NOC) for the entire system in Nigeria.

Ownership The cable is privately owned by Main Street Technologies, international investors like the Africa Finance Corporation and the Pan-African Infrastructure Development Fund (PAIDF) and a couple of Nigerian banks.

Construction time-line On April 28, 2008, it was announced that Main Street Technologies had awarded a turnkey supply contract for the Main One Cable System to Tyco Telecommunications. An October 10, 2008 press release states that the desk top study and engineering for the system had been completed. On July 1, 2010, press release states that Main One had been completed and commissioned. The cable went live on July 22, 2010.

See also List of international submarine communications cables Individual cable systems off the west coast of Africa include:

ACE ATLANTIS-2 GLO-1 SAT-2 SAT-3/WASC WACS

Footnotes

Sources "Main One Web Site" Archived 2015-02-06 at the Wayback Machine "Press Release, Tyco awarded Main One cable contract, April 28, 2008" Archived August 22, 2009, at the Wayback Machine "Press Release, Main One Cable System progressing on schedule, October 10, 2008" "Main One - Work begins on N5.4b sub-marine optical fibre cable Saturday, February 09, 2008" "Nigerian Muse, Competition rocks bandwidth costs via gateways, submarine cable" "Pioneer Consulting awarded MainOne contract", Ghana Business News"

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Main One

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Main One claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Main One before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Main One ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Main One

In research: Main One appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Main One in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Main One is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2010 establishments in Africa, 2010 establishments in Portugal, Infrastructure in Africa, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Main One outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Main One in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Main One means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Main One out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Main One in simple terms?

Why does Main One matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Main One?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Main One.