Speaking at the 8th international conference on computing and research in Kampala, Mr Peter Kahigi, the NITA-U director of technical services said: “The construction of an alternative cable through Tanzania will start in November with funding from the government and other financiers.”
He added: “This will help widen the broadband internet transmission throughout the country and ensure internet reliability. It is another step to achieving the 2015 global broadband target set by the International Telecommunication Union.”
However both NITA-U and ministry of ICT are still tight-lipped on the details of the cable construction budget.
The two day conference was organised by the Makerere University College of Information Technology and Huawei Technologies.
It brought together key players in the telecommunication sector who discussed the foremost channels of boosting the performance of internet mainly. According to the global broadband targets, internet user penetration should clock the 60 per cent mark worldwide in 2015, with at least 50 per cent in developing countries and 15 per cent for LDCs.
In Uganda, internet usage has continued to grow exceeding the 5 million mark early this year. However, even with the growth, cases of unreliability continue due to failures on the main cable.
Seacom is Uganda’s main inland internet connection, which picks it link from other undersea cables including: The East African Marine System (TEAMs) and Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy).
Severally, the cable has had damages, leaving users on the mercy of the expensive and unreliable satellite connections.
The latest damages occurred in March when Seacom’s inland partner in Kenya who delivers capacity to Uganda suffered from an outage hurting local businesses mainly those which depend on internet.
Source: Daily Monitor
