Uganda: Submarine Network to Lower Internet Costs - AllAfrica.com

John OdyekKampala

THE cost of using cyberspace at home, coffeehouses and business offices is put to significantly drop with the building of a new pigboat cablegram web on the East African coastline.

The pigboat cablegrams enable cheap, faster transportation of large amounts of voice and information communicating across the globe.

Seacom, a Mauritius-based company, is constructing the pigboat cablegram web that volition nexus East Africa, South Africa, Europe and Asia.

The grouping presented its concern programs to the Government at the Capital Of Uganda Serena Hotel recently.

The Agha Caravansary Fund for Economic Development have paid $75m for a 25% interest in Seacom. Agha Caravansary and respective international companies have got also invested $600m in the project.

The cablegrams are also expected to make more than occupations in the cyberspace sector, Dr, Ham Mulira, the information and communicating engineering minister, said.

He said the engineering would cut down the cost of voice and information transmittal by up to 80%.

The monthly cost of artificial satellite golf course to cyberspace service suppliers presently stand ups at about $5,000 to $15,000 per two megabits per second. But the mark is to cut down the monthly charge per unit to about $45 to $200 per two megabits.

"This volition output decrease to stop users enabling them to entree cyberspace and other ICT services at rates comparable to those in Europe and America," Mulira said.

"This undertaking and others are expected to back up the creative activity of 12,000 occupations per twelvemonth from a lower limit of 30 phone call Centres operating on two shifts. "The phone call Centres cannot run now because of inadequate bandwidth, limited powerfulness supply and the absence of other information and communicating engineering infrastructure."

"Eastern Africa have been the lone portion of the human race without pigboat cablegrams connectivity," said Brian Herlihy, the president of Seacom.

"The cardinal constructions are starting to be in topographic point now. The impact on the cost of doing concern will be huge.

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"Power supply and telecommunications installations are of import elements for economical development," Herlihy stated.

"With the building now underway, and about 16 calendar months left to commissioning date, we are on agenda to ran into the bandwidth necessitates of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa," he commented.

Brian Ntege, the manager NFT Consult, an ICT house said: "The inquiry now is when Seacom and similar companies could get providing services to clients and not whether the building of the cablegrams should take place."