The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) plans to invest $239 million in a fibre backbone that will consolidate the country's telecommunications infrastructure.
The 5 467km backbone will connect DRC's urban areas to either SAT3, WAFS or to the East African Submarine Cable System.
Speaking during a workshop, at the Highway Africa 2007 conference last week, Alphonse Ntita Misakabu, an independent researcher in the DRC, said: "We need infrastructure and access in our country. There are cables all around Africa that can be used; the question is how do we get these cables into the DRC?"
Ntita Misakabu participated as a researcher in the feasibility study that derived the investment figure.
"The first phase will be to connect Kinshasa to an undersea cable with a fibre optic line. We estimate this will cost around $50 million. The second phase is to join Lubumbashi and the third to connect Kisangani."
The first phase of the backbone implementation can only be completed once negotiations around the undersea cables to be used have been completed.
He says the new backbone should deliver three key objectives: to connect the various urban centres and the smaller areas between, enable a systematic flow of data and voice communications, and to lower the cost of connectivity.
The current infrastructure is primarily owned by individual mobile operators, which according to Ntita Misakabu, has dramatically limited local connectivity.
"The PC is rarely used for Internet connections, but mostly for the desktop application. To ensure that the backbone does not overshoot the cost recommendations, it needs to be installed along the electrical route. As such, we will also be partnering with the DRC's electricity company."
The new backbone is expected to support 10GB throughput.
Tricky task
The country's network is being developed under difficult conditions. "DRC is a war-torn country with around 70% of the population under the poverty line. This is the general picture of where we need to install the backbone," said Ntita Misakabu.
"The Etude de faisibilite pour une dorsale Internet ouverte en RDC" (feasibility study for an open Internet backbone in the DRC), launched in August, was developed to assess three phases of backbone implementation under these conditions, he noted.
Ntita Misakabu said, according to the study, each phase would generate the revenue to implement the next.
"In order to talk about a backbone in the DRC, we wanted everyone to be around the table, including the communications department of the DRC. The department has agreed to have the public operator take part in the feasibility study."
According to Ntita Misakabu, Canadian telecoms company Xit T'el'ecom also participated in the study, which was funded by the Canadian research council.
Related stories:
Bandwidth costs must come down
Cable policy slammed
Cables require local ownership
Highway Africa talks training
Blogger takes on the 'dinosaur'
Convergence or divergence?
Share
