Undersea Fiber Optic Cable: When?
Once again, I want to get back to this topic about the coming undersea fiber optic cable that is supposed to finally deliver high speed internet services to the East African shoreline. White African has a good summary post on this cable line and I got this image from his blog. The white lines show where it is and the blue and red lines show where it will go once implemented. You can see it stops right at the tip of South Africa. Also, if it has to pass through the treacherous waters around Somalia, will those warlords try and blow it up?
Anyway, I want to talk about the companies in Kenya that are gearing up for this “broad band” explosion that is supposedly going to take place once this cable line is inputted. The big cahuna is of course Safaricom. They’re trying to diversity their services and becoming an Internet service provider is obviously going to be one of their goals. In line with this goal, they just spent almost $3 million dollars buying this data company called One Communications. According to the BD Africa article above, One Communications offers Safaricom “the technology and platform to deliver broader services including WiMAX access which enables internet based video, voice and data transmission”. I’m surprised Safaricom, through it’s parent company Vodafone, did not have this technology already. So, let’s talk about Safaricom’s move here and let’s also get some more information on this company, One Communications.
The second point of course, is going to be the fierce competition to become an ISP provider {if and when} this cable line does arrive. Here, I want to about companies like Access Kenya (those Somens give me the creeps). I still don’t get how they are able to make such significant profits in a country with such low internet speeds. However, if Safaricom gets into the mix, they are going to have some fierce competition.
Finally, I’d like to weave this all into a discussion about Kenya’s potential as an outsourcing center. Everyone knows about Kencall, but do people know about this company called Preciss International? They’re in the outsourcing business as well and I’d like to know how they’re doing.
Okay. So, let’s hit it on these topics so we can figure out how to hustle and flow for the green.
Does any one have any info ? Heard that Zain (Celtel) and Telkom Kenya are the biggest partners in this fiber optic line?
I think TELKOM & ZAIN got a big future if this is true and SAFCOM is TOAST
It’s complicated but the S.Africans wanted to ride roughshod over the rest…
Of course, if that idiot dan ‘thieving’ moi didn’t have his illiterate bastards in all the key positions in the telcom sector… we might have had the fibre-optic cable…
Most Kenyan enterprises that rely on the internet are really trying to make it work.I wonder when the bureaucrats will see the light and step up.I recently heard the CEO of http://www.mamamikes.com Segeni Ngethe on radio complaining about the staTe of Kenya’s internet infrastructure.Maybe we should ask ourselves why Somalia has better connections.
Kibugi:
I’d like to ask the founders of mamamikes why they started an internet company in kenya when they knew kenya did not have high speed internet portals?
I mean, if they’re target market is kenyans in the diaspora, why not just run the company out of washington d.c. or london or any other place with high speed internet access.