FREETOWN - Sierra Leone secured its first
fibre optic connection to the outside world on Monday with the
arrival of the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable in
the capital Freetown.
Sierra Leone, which is still recovering from a devastating
11-year civil war that ended in 2002, is part of a dwindling
group of countries still wholly reliant on highly expensive
satellite bandwidth for internet connections.
Numerous studies have identified cheap and fast Internet as
a factor that can boost a country's economic growth.
Wearing a white baseball cap that bore the words "Fiber
Landing", Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma said the
event was proof that his country was making progress.
"We are transforming because, as we are speaking, the only
available communication outside Sierra Leone is through the
satellite, and it is expensive, the quality is limited, and the
capacity also has some limitations," he told an event to mark
the landing of the cable by Lumley Beach in western Freetown.
Gilbert Cooper, director of administration of the
state-owned Sierra Leone Cable company that is landing the
cable, said it would only become operational during the second
half of 2012 as other preparations need to be completed first.
When complete, the 17,000-km (11,000-mile) ACE cable will run from France
to South Africa, connecting 23 countries. The cable was launched by
France Telecom as part of a consortium with telecom operators in
participating countries.
Sierra Leone, along with neighbouring Liberia, missed out on
previous fibre optic cables laid down the West African coast,
such as SAT-3.
"At that time we had a civil war, we didn't have the
opportunity to articulate the arrangement to have a landing
station here," said Senesie Kallon, deputy director general of
Sierra Leone's National Telecommunications Commission.
At present, Internet access in Sierra Leone is currently
slow or expensive, and often both.
According to the National Telecommunications Commission, the
country as a whole has just 155 Megabits of bandwidth, less than
would serve a small American or European town.
Shadi Al-Gerjawi, CEO of mobile phone company Africell in
Sierra Leone, said the cable would provide more than forty times
the current bandwidth in the country.
"October 10, 2011 will always remain a memorable date for
us," he said. "Today is a major milestone in the life of the
telecommunications industry in Sierra Leone."
The World Bank estimates that bandwidth in Sierra Leone
costs 10 times the level in East Africa and 25 times the U.S.
price. Barely one percent of the 5.4 million population have
access to Internet services.
NO MORE VOICE MONOPOLY
The Bank is providing $30 million to fund the connection of
Sierra Leone to the cable offshore, in return for which it said
Sierra Leone would end the current monopoly of the state
operator on its international gateway for voice calls.
"There was an opportunity to connect Sierra Leone to ACE in
2011 and if the country were to miss that it wasn't clear
there'd be further opportunities," said Vijay Pillai, the bank's
country manager in Freetown.
The International Telecommunication Union said in August
that nine African countries remain wholly dependent on satellite
Internet.
Alongside Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, Chad,
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Guinea, Liberia, São
Tomé and Príncipe and the Seychelles all lack fibre optic
connections to the wider world.
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