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EA Internet 'Backhaul Ring' Slated for April, U.S.$35 Million Needed
Nairobi, Mar 08, 2010 (The East African/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
About $35 million is needed to complete the East African Backhaul System (EABs), a project that will link terrestrial fibre from the five East Africa Community countries with the submarine cables at Mombasa and Dar es Salaam by April.
There will be at least one point of presence in each of the five countries where subscribed telecom operators can access the EABs Internet capacity.
The EABs project is owned by mostly telecom companies.
"EABs will be owned by the signatories to the shareholders agreement in proportion to their financial commitments to EABs," said MTN Rwanda chief operating officer Andrew Rugege.
Currently EABs is funded by signatories to the MOU notably MTN Rwanda, MTN Uganda, Onatel Burundi, Rwandatel, Telkom Kenya, TTCL in Tanzania, U-Com Burundi, UTL in Uganda, and Zantel in Tanzania.
Officials said that by April the backhaul system will form a major ring that will connect traffic from the five countries to the EASSy cable points in Mombasa and Dar es Salaam.
Regional connections
The general ring will be linked to a small ring that will run from Kigali through Rusumo, Murungoromo in Tanzania, Kabanga, Bujumbura and to Butare in Rwanda.
On the other hand, the major ring will connect the minor ring through Katuna, Mbarara, Kampala to Malaba and then Nairobi before docking at Mombasa while in Tanzania it will pass through Mwanza, Singida, Dodoma and then Dar es Salaam.
Once completed, the rings will enable fast Internet traffic within the region.
Most Internet service providers in the region depend on satellite connections which first divert Internet traffic to Europe.
Mr Rugege told The EastAfrican that at a recent meeting in Kigali, the EABs project management team agreed to complete several programmes including the development of the Construction and Maintenance Agreement and presentation of the MOU to potential investors for signing.
"Between February and March each party should have contributed a fibre pair. All equipment should have been installed by end of March, according to available information," Mr Rugege said.
MoU phase
The EABs is still in what experts call the memorandum of understanding phase.
In this phase, the principles on which the systems will be developed are agreed among the potential investors.
"During this phase, and guided by the developed principles, the shareholders agreement is drafted. This has been concluded and will be shortly presented to operators in the region - not just sponsors of the project - for signing," Mr Rugege added.
The telecom operators who were part of the Kigali meeting agreed that the basic infrastructure for the development of EABs will be the national fibre network of the five countries.
"The investors will jointly fund the equipping of these fibres using DWDM technology," he said.
"Except for Burundi and Tanzania which is completing some missing sections, all the backbone infrastructure is in place. Burundi's will be ready by June this year," he added.
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