EASSy cable arriving Africa , price internet down, less satellite

The arrival of EASSy

is providing further impetus to the roll-out of inter-country and national fibre networks. The East African Backbone System ring (Mombasa-Nairobi-Kampala-Kigali-Bujumbura-Dar-es-Salaam-Mombasa) is under development. The final pieces in the jigsaw are the link to Bujumbura and the link from there to Dar: both will be complete by the end of 2010.

The biggest new advance at a national level is the Tanzanian national backbone

which is being built with largely Chinese loan finance and the first part of the first phase has just been completed and the whole of the first phase will be completed by August 2010 Phase 2 will be completed in 12 months time and will give connections to six neighbouring countries. According to the team:”In the near future, small places like Kigoma on the border of Rwanda and Burundi will be connected.” 24 cores for part of the network came from the power utility TANESCO.

Chinese finance

The network will cost US$200 million, US$170 million of which will come from a Chinese loan and US$30 million of which will come from the Government. It offers 4 channels of 10 Gbps each on most parts of the network but slightly lower on some of the cross-border links. It will offer customers service level agreements and anticipates offering 99.999% network availability. There will be NOCs in Dar es Salaam and Dodoma.

source: balancingact-africa.com