BETTER telecommunication means speedy and cheaper access to information, which is a key factor for enhanced economic growth. Tanzania is determined to capitalise on this through its national fibre optic cable network also termed as the National ICT Broadband Backbone (NICTBB) and other links such as the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) and the SEACOM.
The NICTBB fibre-optic backbone has been extended to nine border crossings with Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi and Zambia. The fibre optic network connectivity to more countries, mostly landlocked countries to the international cable having the landing points in Dar es Salaam is making the country a hub of ICT infrastructure and solutions within the region.
Key to this objective is the NICTBB infrastructure programme, being rolled out phase by phase to provide Tanzania with what its name implies: a real digital backbone to bring a technological transformation to the whole country.
According to the Liquid Telecom, Chief Executive Officer Mr Nic Rudnick, Tanzania is positioned to be a hub and potential to be guide way of fibre optic network connectivity for the East, Central and Southern Africa.
“Formerly we brought capacities to Zambia and Zimbabwe from South Africa but for the first time we are bringing it from Tanzania,” he said adding that Tanzania has a key role to play in from the telecommunication point of view in the east and southern Africa.
He added, “We are ready providing redundancy to Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Zambia through Tanzania. And we would like to do a lot more.
The landing stations are here in Tanzania and are real uniquely to be hub for east, central and southern Africa.” Mr Rudnick made the remarks during the Annual conference that constituted all large cable operators across the continent who met to share experience on new technologies in the fibre network connectivity.
But for Mr Rudnick, having cheaper and affordable network connectivity was insufficient if the internet services are not of the global standards of high speed the internet speed is low.
He said, “We need to move from people having just a mobile phone to having high speed internet and other device services available in the houses and in the way places,” The main focus of the government is to make ICT services accessible and affordable to all citizens at the standard speed.
Getting internet to remote areas is also seen as a development tool to boost education and opportunities for the poorer population. “We’re dedicated to making life better for our customers, and their businesses. So whatever your sector, and whatever you require, we’ll have the solution to help,” he said. Similarly, ICT must improve its current contribution to GDP of around 3 percent in order to become a true facilitator for almost every other economic activity including banking, insurance, transport, agriculture and even in the social sectors.
He said in Tanzania, Pan-African telecommunications operator, Liquid Telecom has started to connect enterprises particularly those which have services across the East African region into one single network.
The company has built a fibre link from Nairobi to Namanga on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. Traffic terminating in Tanzania will now pass onto TTCL’s fibre network. He said Tanzania and others in the continent have made remarkable achievement to go from very low penetration rate of 1-2 per cent to close to 100 per cent in 15 years.
“It is certainly much quicker accomplished than elsewhere in the world. In Europe for example it took a decade to get the entire fibre optic network penetrations,” he said. Looking comparatively with Europe, 95 per cent of data consumption by volume is consumed on the fixed network in people’s houses; only five per cent by volume is consumed on the mobile phones.
It tells that mobile device is not always the most cost effective way to consume data and internet and to use a lot of content. And the way people use the content is at home and in office and they want that service to be high speed and available. To bring fibre into people’s homes means 100 megabytes per second, to give what it means to have high speed internet at most cost efficient way.
“We are holding fibre optic network connection in eleven countries and we now have the largest fibre optic network in continent, connecting more countries across borders than any other single connecting homes have consumed bulk of the company’s investments and we now continue to attract significant proportion of the firm’s investment in the coming years,” he noted.

Source: Daily News

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