For a country that has prioritized ICT as a tool to enhance development, there is a sigh of relief as the submarine cable will give Rwanda a cheaper broadband provider compared with broadband from satellite which is costly.
For instance, one Mbps (megabyte per second) of the satellite broadband costs Rwanda US$ 1900 a month. This results in a relatively high cost of internet services to the end users, with cyber cafes charging around Frw 600 per hour. Once EASSy is operational, the cost will reduce significantly to about US$ 500 per month for one Mbps.
"Our aim is to reduce the costs of bandwidth to the end user," says Christopher Wood, the CEO of WIOCC. He also points out that lower prices will enhance competition.
The 10,000 kilometer submarine cable system will connect about 20 East and Southern African countries, running across the East coast from South Africa to Sudan.
Despite the significant reduction in broadband costs, Rwanda will still face a higher charge due to it being far away from the sea coast.
However, the optic fiber cables currently being laid by local telecommunications companies could lead to a further reduction in costs. The fiber backbone will be connected to Uganda's national backbone and up to the Kenyan coast at Mombasa.
"All telecom companies in East Africa are putting in place fiber optic which will be joined to access the submarine cable. Once this is complete the cost of bandwidth at the coast will be the same as Kigali which would be about US$100 per megabyte," Wood remarks, while warning that if the fiber connection from Kigali to the coast in not complete, broadband would not be significantly cheaper in Rwanda.
He points out that the EASSy network is fully scalable and can offer bandwidth options between 2Mbps up to 10Gbps with flexible contract terms from one month to about 25 years, which is typically the lifetime of the cable system itself.
Buying more bandwidth Romain Murenzi, the Minister in the President's Office in charge of science & technology, remarks that once Rwanda has been connected to EASSy, it would acquire enough broadband to compete on the regional level and beyond. "Each year we pay more than six million dollars for internet, and with the reduction in costs we can purchase more bandwidth," Murenzi says.
He emphasizes Rwanda's efforts in laying the ICT infrastructure such as the 2300 kilometer national fiber optic backbone, which will fully come into use once the submarine cable was in place. "But we will need to progressively acquire the skills to maintain and run the application once it is in place," the Minister notes.
Meanwhile Rwanda's achievements in ICT have been hailed by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (CTO) of which Rwanda became a member two years ago.
According Samuel Fletcher, CTO's corporate communications and international events manager, Rwanda has in recent years distinguished itself in the ICT sector as being a leader in proactive ICT policy making, regulation, mobile and internet broadband growth as well as the recent expansion in connectivity to the remote areas of the nation. These achievements have convinced the council of CTO to organize the third African e-governance forum in Rwanda.
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Quelle/Source: TMCnet, 02.04.2009
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