East Africa invests a combined US$400m in fiber

30.05.2011
Five East African countries are investing a combined US$400 million in terrestrial fiber optics for backbone cables that, when complete, will provide a vast network for Internet connectivity.

This fiber system, which will cover more than 15,600 kilometers, will link Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi and will create the largest interconnected region on the continent. The network will stretch from South Sudan in the north to Tanzania's border with Zambia and Malawi in the south and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the west.

The terrestrial network, dubbed the East Africa Backhaul System, will connect to the submarine fiber-optic cables on the East Africa coast.

In January, Rwanda completed work on its 2,300 km cable at a cost of $60 million. Korea Telecom (KT) laid the fiber. The cable covers the capital Kigali and provides connectivity to the country's borders with Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and DR Congo. It also covers all the four provinces, links into the main police headquarters, universities and other remote government and administrative offices.

Tanzania is continuing to lay its more than 10,000 km cable at a cost of approximately $170 million. Links to the main borders with Malawi, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are almost completed, according to John S. Nkoma, the director general of the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA).

Private operators in Tanzania must augment the cable to reach those areas that will not have been reached by the national backbone, said Nkoma, speaking in the Rwandan capital during the 18th Congress of the East Africa Communications Organisation (EACO), an umbrella body for the telecom regulators in the region.