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The hype of the fibre optics talk was particularly fuelled by the sale of 70 per cent of the Enlarged Ghana Telecom to Vodafone at a "paltry" $900 million.
The Enlarged GT included the fixed line operations, the mobile phone operations (Onetouch), the call centre (Exzeed), the National Fibre Optics Backbone and the SAT-3 Submarine Fibre Optics landing station.
In simple terms, fibre optics refers to the technology that enables the transmission of information (as light impulses) along a glass-like or plastic-like wire other than the conventional copper wire.
Fibre optic wire carries much more information at a faster speed than conventional copper wire and is far less subject to breaks in communications. It is widely used by telephone companies, around the world, for long-distance lines.
Because fibre optics transmits larger volumes of information (data and voice) at a higher speed, it makes internet and telecommunications more affordable than satellite does.
In fact, the coming of fibre optics has compelled satellite technology companies to slash down their prices by more than 50 per cent, said Karl Keppke, Regional Sales Director for O3b Networks, a satellite company with operations in Africa.
Mr Keppke told this writer, at the just ended Telecom World Africa Conference in
The benefits fibre optics promises for
These are necessary to enable
Another fall out advantage of fibre optics, particularly for those who are concerned about the spread of telecom masts in residential areas across Ghana, is that fibre optics does not need masts and antennae to operate. Satellite technology uses masts but fibre optics is underground technology.
Currently, Africa is virtually inundated in the sea of submarine fibre optic cables; there are at least eight undersea fibre optic cables, with an aggregate of 10.94 terabytes capacity, landing in almost all the coastal countries of Africa; some of the cables also provide connectivity to several inland countries.
The undersea cables available to Africa right now are SAT-3, 120 gigabytes; Main-one, 1.92 terabytes; Glo-one, 640 gigabytes; East African Submarine Cable System (EASSY), 1.3 terabytes; South Asia Telecom Cable (SEACOM), 1.2 terabytes; The Eastern African Marine Systems (TEAMS), 640 gigabytes; and the largest of them all, West Africa Cable System (WACS), 5.12 terabytes.
On the West Coast of Africa, SAT-3 (14,000km), WACS (14,000km) and Main one (14,000 km) connects Europe to
Glo1 (9,500km), owned by Nigerian-based Globacom, connects
Ghana is a beneficiary of at least four submarine cables; SAT-3, which is currently 50 per cent live; Glo1, expected to go live later this year; Main-one due in May 2010 and WACS due 2011.
All things being equal, in less than five years, the whole of
According to Mr Alhassan Umar, Executive Director of Information Technology Enable Service (ITES) Secretariat, with such a huge fibre optic capacity,
He explained that the submarine fibre optics landing stations would provide a huge backup of redundant fibre optics capacity that would trigger investor confidence in the ability of the country's BPO companies to provide reliable, high speed and affordable communications service to their clients around the world.
On the eastern coast of Africa there is
SEACOM (15,000km) is also on the east, connecting
TEAMS is 4,500km long and links Kenya with the United Arab Emirates, with possible landing stations in Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi.
Affordable and high speed transmission of information, reduction in spread of telecom masts and confidence booster in Africa as a BPO hub, are all very good benefits of fibre optics for
At the just ended Telecom World Africa 2009 conference in Cape Town South Africa, industry stakeholders expressed concern over whether the expected level of demand for fibre optics technology in
The supply side has been well catered for, but there is a dilemma as to whether the level of demand would sustain the supply; the danger of a huge chunk of
TEAMS, for instance, is being constructed at a cost of $82 million; EASSY Way, $235; Main One, $240 million, SEACOM, $600 million and WACS, SAT-3 and GLO1 are all multi-million-dollar projects.
One of the arguments was that, not many of the 72 GSM carriers and 35 CDMA operators (like Kasapa) in
Price per megabyte per month of fibre optic capacity differs from one cable to the other; on SAT-3, for instance, a megabyte of capacity costs between $4,500 to $12,000 per month; 50 times higher than what similar fibre optics capacity in the United States of America.
WIOCC, majority shareholders of
Currently, there are at least 80 drivers, including major telecom operators, internet service providers (ISPs) and corporate investors onboard the fibre optics train and actually driving the development of the technology.
That excludes a huge number of smaller telecom operators and their customers from the fibre optics revolution.
Industry stakeholders also argued that fibre optics consumption lies more in data communication and internet connectivity than in voice, saying that the high level of illiteracy, poverty, power supply bottlenecks and lack of access to ICT infrastructure to a larger portion of
It is, for instance, projected that data costs, which now averaged between $5,000 and $7,000 per megabit of bandwidth on satellite, would be reduced drastically to $500 per megabit on fibre optics, and that would translate into even more affordable transmission of data for the average African. (Source: TEAMS
But people are not likely to do data communications if they are not educated and or cannot afford to acquire ICT equipment and hi-tech mobile handsets needed for that kind of communication.
Again there is a huge power supply problem across
The call is, therefore, for telecom operators in
In
Some of the operators, particularly MTN, have earmarked funds to build ICT centres in all 10 regions of the country to give internet access to schools and communities in the hinterlands.
The Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) is also undertaking a similar project; providing ICT centres and power sources to un-served and under-served communities across the country.
GIFEC and individual operators have also collaborated to provide lots of fixed wireless pay phones in rural communities and in schools to enable people make and receive calls as well as receive money transferred to them on pay phones.
Speaking of money transfer, the telecom operators in
Indeed, convergence technology has been identified as one way by which much more fibre optics capacity could be consumed through the use of mobile handsets.
There was one more concern about submarine fibre optic cables in
Paul Edwards, Chairman of Starcomms Communications, Nigeria, who presided at the TWA 09 conference, said submarine fibre optics is bringing the kind of information technology available to the average citizen in a developed country to the average citizen of an African country with Mr Sarat Dutt Lallah, CEO of Mauritius Telecom adding that when the time comes, Africans would be ready for it.
