Whether it will be EASSy or TEAMS, the urgent need for East Africa to have a submarine cable will become apparent within a few years.
The 2006 merger of Intelsat and PanAmSat, creating the worlds’ largest satellite provider, will have profound implications for Africa which is estimated to be 80% dependent on satellite communications. Higher costs can be expected from the giant company once existing agreements expire and ISP’s will have no choice but to pass these own to consumers.
The government of Kenya broke away from other African countries (in EASSy) and has committed to the TEAMS project, budgeted at $100 million. It committed to pay $15 million this financial year and has contracted Standard Chartered bank to raise additional funding from ICT operators in the private sector.
Whatever else GoK does within the next 9 months, they have to get one of these Fibre Optic projects on board and operational in Kenya. I am of the opinion that these are the sort of projects they should be issuing their 15yr+ bonds for not recurring spend.
kenya needs that fiber cable like yesterday – low internet latency will enable good quality voip, video conferencing and voice conferencing ….. all at a cheap price
one pays 39$ for 4MB down – 400k up in US
one pays 1600$ for 256k/256k in Kenya
and the latency is BAD
I kinda love ur blog, so Informative..
The fiber will have an even bigger impact than the cell phone revolution. High margin outsourcing depends on high bandwidth, and the sooner Kenya gets it the sooner, the outsourcing contracts will come. Right now India is reaching capacity, evidenced by either the drop in quality, or rise in prices. Kenya has a chance to grab this lucrative industry, that will dwarf the Horticulture industry.