Oct 15 2007
The East African Marine System - TEAMS - says fiber optic cable is now set for laying. A French company Alcatel -Lucent won the tender to lay the cable at cost of 82 million dollars, which is about 5.5 billion shillings.
Speaking in his office, Information and Communications PS Dr Bitange Ndemo said the company won the contract owing to the duration of time for completion of the project and the low overall cost they quoted.
Currently the East African coast has no direct links to the international fiber optic network, making connectivity costly and unreliable.
Ndemo said in embarking on laying the cable, the region is set to benefit a lot through reduced communication costs.
Already countries like Eastern DR Congo, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia and countries in the East African community region are set to tap into the benefits of faster and cheaper connectivity.
Alcatel Lucent will take 15 per cent stake in TEAMS while the regional countries take 85 per cent of which Kenya is taking a 40 per cent holding stake.
Ndemo said the project has adequate funds to see it through. Communication costs in Africa are some of the highest globally. Africa pays some 400 million dollars annually on routing of data traffic.
Africa's international voice and data traffic increased by 91 per cent to 5.09 gigabytes per second in 2002 and is set to increase to 21.9 gigabytes per second come next year.