West Africa high speed internet

[Susanna Dodgson]

I know the East Africa cable is well underway; when I was in Nairobi in August the streets were all being dug up to lay down fiber-optic cable, and by the time the East Africa Submarine cable is functional, Kenya will be ready. What concerns me is West Africa. Since July 2007 I have been to Nigeria 3 times. West Africa does not have anything that really works outside satellite connections, which are really, really expensive; and these don't work when the power is off, which can happen 3 times a day (when I was at Unilag for 2 weeks in April, even at UniLag).
Is anyone an expert in this? Does anyone know what is happening inside Nigeria and out in the Atlantic Ocean?

[Farotade Oluwaseun]

Nigeria's second national carrier, Globacom, has emphasised its readiness to launch its international submarine cable, Glo 1, touted as the solution to Nigeria and West Africa's bandwidth requirements, in March 2009.


Globacom, in a statement last week, said the 9,500 kilometre state-of-the-art cable would enable it to have a clear distinction in providing quality services through multiple and high quality direct links to several countries across the globe. It added that the cable would enable it to interconnect with several international networks and leading traffic carriers all over the world.

The firm's Group Chief Operating Officer, Mohamed Jameel, said the $150 million contract for the construction of the 8,300-kilometre long submarine cable was awarded to Alcatel Lucent. The project is expected to provide connectivity from Lagos to Bude in UK through fibre optic cable laid undersea. The cable’s capacity was described as up to 32 STM 64s.

Jameel said in readiness for the launch, 4,400 kilometres of the undersea cable had already been laid from UK, through Portugal to Nouakchott in Mauritania. According to him, cable laying from Nouakchott to Nigeria had started, adding that the cable required to complete the laying of the facility to Nigeria was already on its way. Previously it was understood that the cable had been laid as far as Dakar but not landed.

He said the cable, with a capacity of 640 Giga bytes, would have landing points in UK, Portugal, Ghana and Senegal as well as in Lagos and Bonny in Nigeria by February next year.

Jameel added that landing points would also be extended to other West Africa countries by the fourth quarter of 2009. There will be 18 branching units along the route upon completion of the project.

In addition to the Glo 1 project, Jameel said Alcatel would also provide one STM 64 submarine cable capacity from UK to New York to connect Nigeria to the United States (US) to provide crystal clear voice calls and high speed data/Internet transmission services.

Globacom's international operation is backed by the four gateways it has deployed in Nigeria comprising two in Lagos, one in Abuja and one in Port Harcourt.

[Susanna Dodgson]

This is great. I heard conflicting accounts in the Corporate Council for Africa Health Forum in DC last week. So essential, access to information is a health issue. The 3 times I visited Nigeria, the only time I had uninterrupted internet access was in the waiting lounge in the airport waiting to fly from Lagos to Benin City (I waited a long time because I missed my flight - Lagos traffic is great fun but seriously decreases the number of things that can be done in a day). I want an article on West African connectivity; I published an article on East African connectivity which was a series of edited press releases in www.mjota.org.

Are you involved in this at all? Is this interest entirely academic?

[Farotade Oluwaseun]

Internet access in Nigeria is relatively a big issue,acquisition cost for high speed internet on CDMA is quite prohibitive for the ordinary citizen and other platforms such as HSDPA and EVDO is out of reach.
When next you are in Nigeria,try to get an EVDO express card and you would have uninterrupted internet access.

I tried getting involved but access to funding was an issue so I dropped the idea.My interest is now purely academic

[Susanna J Dodgson BSc(Hons), PhD]

Getting funding is not so hard. The hard thing is having a complete business plan that includes detailed information on return on investment. The hard thing is to convince the professional who wants to get funding is that the amount of work to get a business plan to get funding is huge. If I can find someone who can work to put together a water-tight business plan I can get funding. Far easier to find investors and big capital than professionals with burning drive and vision. How is that for provocation?

Nigeria is crying out for access to highspeed internet; it cannot partake in the global economy without it. I spoke with some specialist physicians who want to build a big specialist hospital in Nigeria: they need to be able to move data quickly and securely.

[Farotade Oluwaseun]

True talk

Moving data quickly and securely is important for very business.Many businesses in Nigeria have been able to leverage on existing technologies to operate their business in a cost effective manner utilizing available infrastructure.

my firm just signed an agreement earlier today with a Malaysian entity to provide cost effective connectivity solutions to a wide range of industries.So your specialist physicians friends might have to go ahead and build their specialist hospital and they can be sure they would get world class service from us.

[Matthew Mayowa Olubusi]

Can you check www.gloworld.com and read details regarding the Glo Gateway which is the fibre-optic arm of Globacom (the second national operator in Nigeria). The Company has done extensive works in terms of laying fibre-optic cables connecting the West African coast to Europe and North America. Services should start soon I guess!!!

[Ed Dodds]

Susan:

I'm not an expert but I try to track the intersection of high speed broadband at my blog, especially under distance.education and ubiquity channels. There was a recent all Africa summit http://edodds.blogs.com/conmergence/2007/10/expanding-afric.html and a call for projects in the east http://edodds.blogs.com/conmergence/2008/11/identifying-usafrican-c... which conceivably could be expanded. Also see http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/Global_University/Global%20U... for topics related to a Trans-Africa Ultra High Speed Optical Fiber Network project (some connection to the UN and the Japan Fund possible).

Ed Dodds

[Ed Dodds]

Also watch the Afrigator posts and stories http://afrigator.com/search/index/broadband

[Ed Dodds]

Also track citizen and independent journalism from various regions:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Digital_Divide

indymedia.org broadband africa

merinews.com broadband africa

ohmynews.com broadband africa

[Ben]

Thanks for these links. Most helpful !

[Susanna Dodgson]

This is all great, but the hurdles are still huge. I went to a Corporate Council on Africa Health Forum in November and was listening to a talk by a South African CEO of a pharmaceutical company. He said something astounding: he refuses ever to pay a bribe anywhere. This is the first time I have heard this said and it is exciting.
What has this to do with highspeed internet in Nigeria? Everything. This is a country with daily power outages (and the power company employees demand bribes to provide even sporadic power, at least that was what I saw in BAV studios where I work in Surulere); a country when even canned tomatoes has to be imported (and Nigerian food has tomatoes in everything). Given that back-drop, is high-speed internet somehow avoiding all payment of bribes, avoiding corruption? I desperately want the answer to be yes. http://mjota.org.

[Ed Dodds]

Technologically, of course, the answer is easy. WiMax and solar energy vendors should team up to build out the grid. One could avoid the ground by using blimps, drones, etc. RE: Bribes seen as a fee-for-service where there is no other meaningful industry exists, well, that's a catch-22. Broadband could bring knowledge work (if global employers would learn to pay for something other than butts-in-seats, i.e. driving into a plant in order to post on a wiki or write software {see Results-Only Work Environments at your local search engine}). Bribes purely for sloth, well, that's a theological problem, which, ironically, broadband could help (at least in delivering seminary curricula). The one anti-corruption benefit of broadband is the enabling wiki-eske ability to create "walls of shame" near real-time -- both of the ones perpetrating the corruption -- and of the law enforcement officials for not prosecuting them (in those cases where the actors aren't the same people). XBRL was just mandated yesterday in the US for firms over 5 billion -- so getting to underlying data is at least theoretically going to be easier. Wish I had more optimistic answers.