Fibre backbone cables for Africa

hahaha... between countries... but not within South Africa. Price stays the same for us. :mad:
 
In Zambia, the local electrical supplier Zesco has fibre line from the Namibian border near Livingstone(Vic Falls) all the way to the Copperbelt in the north(Ndola& Kitwe) not sure it stretches to the Tanzanian border)

Small ISP's are renting 2Mb/s+ streams from Lusaka to Ndola on Zesco fiber
I wonder if we have access to the old Transtel Fibre routing via the railway tracks.
Comesa (HQ in Lusaka,Zambia) (somebody tell Comesa their website is down) has a dept to co-ordinate the various fibre links linking the member countries from Zambia up to Kenya.
 
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we have to find a way to get out of the copper age and into the optical light age. unfortunately there appears to be a brick wall of stupidity and greed between these two eras. they can postpone it and make life miserable for all of us, or they can reap the rewards of the increase in business, innovation and personal freedom the new connectivity will bring. the real question is, who is going to make the leap of faith first? we can no longer continue to sacrifice generations to the Curse of Tantalus (King Tantalus was cursed by the Gods for File-sharing. His punishment was to remain in a pool of water that he could not drink, under an apple tree whose branches he could not touch) --DRL
 
Please could we have less reports on what 'could be' to what is actually going to happen.

All we have heard in this country is how broadband prices 'could drop dramatically' when in reality when things start coming to fruition all we get are excuses why it is not actually going to happen.

The reality unfortunately is that no matter how much fibre is laid, how much 'competition' we get or how many cables are laid at our shores. we will continue to pay much more than our counterparts worldwide.
 
Mean_Monster said:
Oh my.... The rest of Africa is going to pass us shortly in the Broadband space :eek:
Click to expand...

This has been happening over the last couple of years thanks to our wonderful policy of "managed liberalisation" and the wonder that is !CASA and our guavamunt.

Hopefully articles like this will be read to people in SA guavamunt and they'll start realising how far they're falling behind and actually do something about it, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
 
seacom

this from an article titled"Spaghetti Junction" from FM Tech
this is a quote by Cornelis Groesbeek of Infraco:

"Infraco had originally planned to build its own cable system, known as the Africa West Coast Cable, but scrapped those plans last year and joined the Wacs initiative. Groesbeek says the company won concessions from the big operators, who had wanted a closed club consortium model in an effort to keep prices high. Wacs now operates along open access principles, which means any licensed operator can buy capacity from any of the 11 investors."
the sad part is these guys say they dont want to enter the retail field so it looks like we will have to be stuck with what we currently have.
 
You only need to read as far as "should" then you know the story!

Why "should" and not "would"...Do these companies not have business plans, cost analysis etc...SURELY before you start with a project you "should" know what the costs are going to be....FFF - same with seacom! i guess the "should factor is controlled by the "would" factor...

How much would the user be willing to be screwed...
 
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