Broadband Internet Finally Comes to Eastern Africa

By Philip Emase

Cheap, fast broadband internet has finally come to Eastern Africa, with an undersea fibre optic cable linking five countries to Europe and Asia going live Thursday.

The $600m fibre optic cable, which is the region’s first, was activated simultaneously in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa and Mozambique. From these countries, it will be extended to landlocked countries like Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia.

This new connection is expected to lower the cost of internet services and telephone calls drastically, potentially boosting trade and economic development in the region. The cable project is owned by SEACOM, a private consortium with about 75 per cent ownership by African investors.

"Today is a historic day for Africa and marks the dawn of a new era for communications between the continent and the rest of the world," SEACOM’s chief executive, Brian Herlihy, said in a statement.

The commissioning of the 17,000 km undersea cable relieves East Africa of its undesirable tag as the only inhabited coastline in the world without a connection to the global broadband map. It links the five African countries with London, Marseille and Mumbai.

Many African countries have been relying on satellite connections, which yield slow, sporadic internet services that limit connectivity with the rest of the world, and make the use of services like Google Earth and YouTube an uphill task.

In Tanzania, President Jakaya Kikwete personally led the commissioning ceremony.

“The arrival of this cable signals the beginning of a new era in the telecommunications sector. History has been made,” President Kikwete declared in a live telecast from Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

Initially scheduled for June 27, the launch of the SEACOM cable was delayed for a month because of increased activity by Somali pirates on the Indian Ocean.

Local internet service providers in the region have been busy laying interconnecting fibre-optic cables across and between cities over the past year, hoping to begin offering broadband internet services soon after the cable launch.

However, some of them say it may take up to September before the service becomes ubiquitous.

“The fibre optic cable is expensive to lay, so service providers will initially serve areas they think have potential,” said Tom Omariba, the Managing Director of UUNet-Kenya.