2009-07-23 10:03:31
The first of four undersea cables bringing high-speed internet to eastern
Africa goes live on Thursday. The BBC's Anne Waithera, in the Kenyan capital
Nairobi, finds a nation impatient to join the broadband revolution.
In a busy cyber cafe in Nairobi dozens of people, mostly young, are hunched
over computers surfing the net.
I try to strike up a conversation with one of them but he will not even look my
way. Without looking up from the monitor he signals with his hand that I should
wait until he is done.
You'll see a lot of YouTube and Facebook stuff now made for Africa by
Africans
Idd Salim Symbiotic Media Consortium
This is perfectly understandable. It costs slightly less than $1 to surf for
about an hour in a cyber-cafe in Nairobi and internet connection speeds are
very slow.
But he is ready to talk after he pays his bill.
"It's not good. It's hanging and keeps wasting time and frustrating me," he
says.
Another frustrated user complains: "I've spent more than 15 minutes instead of
10."
But things are about to change for these internet users.
The Seacom undersea fibre-optic cable goes live on Thursday, promising changes
that will be felt right across eastern and southern Africa.
The switch will take place simultaneously in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa,
Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Maputo in Mozambique and Mtunzini in South Africa.
The switchover from relying mainly on satellites to the submarine cable is
expected to massively increase connection speeds.
One of the biggest setbacks of satellite connections is that a change in
weather almost always leads to unstable connectivity.
It is hoped that cyber-cafe owners will transfer the benefits to their
customers, as they will be making a huge savings on international links.
"When the fibre-optic cable goes live this means the speeds will be fantastic,
we'll have a higher turnover of clients and that translates to increased
income," says Fred, a cyber-cafe manager.
These benefits will also be felt by millions of phone users, who will enjoy
cheaper international connections and quicker voice transfers.
"The fibre-optic connection enables faster voice transfer unlike satellite,
which has an average response time of 650 milliseconds, thus introducing some
delays in our voice communication," says Mahmoud Noor, Seacom's cable-station
manager in Mombasa.
Mr Noor says the new service will reduce this to an average of 90 milliseconds
for calls between Europe and eastern Africa, and an even faster response of
less than six milliseconds between Dar es Salaam and Mombasa.
Potential squandered?
In Kenya, various sectors of the economy are expecting a major boost following
the launch of the undersea cable, and investors are anxious about it.
"At the Nairobi stock exchange there is a possibility that things like
day-trading will be introduced, where you make an order and in two minutes you
will know if it has been sold or not," says Idd Salim of the Symbiotic Media
Consortium, a software firm in Nairobi.
"That is not possible right now because you have to make an order today then
wait for two or three days for it to clear."
Mr Salim says that Africa's potential is being hindered by the absence of fast
internet connectivity and this technological advance will open new avenues.
"For instance computer programmers cannot start a video service or a powerful
website because the connection is slow," he says.
"You'll see a lot of YouTube and Facebook stuff now made for Africa by
Africans.
"Look at things like medicine - people will be able to be diagnosed from their
homes because now we can have virtual hospitals."
The use of the undersea cable is expected to be immediate, save for some ISPs
(Internet Service Providers) who may want to test it within their networks for
a few days first.
Last month the Teams fibre-optic cable was launched in the coastal city of
Mombasa, but it has yet to go live.