NEW FIBRE OPTIC BACKBONE GOING INTO OPERATION IN UGANDA
Years of waiting and billions of Uganda Shillings in expenditure are now coming to a successful conclusion as Chinas Huawei is handing over the finished product to the Ugandan government, which has paid for the installation of fibre optic cables across the country to connect The Pearl of Africa within and with the rest of the world at affordable cost. This second phase now connects Uganda to the borders with South Sudan but also to Kenya where it supplements existing fibreoptic networks by the three commercial cable operators. The present capacity of 2.5GB 24 core cable, with the option to upgrade to 10GB, will for the time being enable data traffic for outsourced business activities including e-learning and e-medicinal applications.
The new public fibre optic connection is thought to provide redundancy to the commercial cables, which in the past have been prone to vandalism or accidental down times, hugely affecting all internet based communications and business transactions. The final project phase will go underway soon aimed to connect Uganda with the Rwandan border, completing the rollout of fibre optic networks across the country, although that has been talk to also connect the borders with Tanzania on the Western side of Lake Victoria in anticipation of a link from Dar es Salaam, which would provide added redundancies, as the saying here goes just in case.
On a related note it could not be established if at all the new links will help to bring the cost of internet connections to make it more affordably, especially for schools and institutions of higher learning, in the capital, key urban centres and rural areas, and for business and domestic users many of whom have often complained about the high cost of using the internet, which puts it beyond what most Ugandans can afford. Watch this space.
