Kampala-Kigali Fibre Cable Link to Cost U.S.$9 Million

Technology firm Altech Stream East Africa will invest US$9 million to expand its terrestrial fibre-optic cable from the Kampala to Kigali.

Altech Stream East Africa is made up of three companies including Kenya Data Networks (KDN), one of the leading internet service providers (ISPs) in the Kenya market, Infocom Uganda with a 30% market share in Uganda and Altech Stream Rwanda.Altech Stream today boasts of a terrestrial fibre optic link that stretches over 1,000 kilometres from the Kenyan city of Mombasa at the coast to Kampala.

On the Kenyan side of the cable, KDN built and owns the network while on the Ugandan side, Infocom has leased fibre from power company Uganda Electricity Transmission Company (UETCL).

This is how the company, which holds the point of presence (PoP) tenancy agreement for the Seacom fibre cable and its subsidiaries in the two countries, has been able to deliver high speed broadband to users.

"The link from Kampala to Kigali will cost between $8 million and $9 million and work will start within a month," Hans Heardtle, the Chief Executive Infocom said.

Today, there is an existing fibre optic link between Kampala and Mbarara in south-western Uganda that belongs to MTN Uganda.

However, Altech Stream East Africa has just completed work on a high-powered microwave link that is on test. It is this link that will in the meantime connect Rwanda to the Seacom submarine fibre optic cable that went live last month.

"Rwanda missed out on the launch of Seacom because then we did not have a link to the cable, but when the tests are completed, they will come online and the microwave link will be complemented by the terrestrial cable when work is completed in four months," Heardtle said.

Heardtle was speaking last week at the launch of Green Future Limited, a Kenyan company that builds and provides support to optic fibre cable infrastructure development companies by offering surveillance to their networks.Green Future builds and maintains optic fibre networks but their package comes with an environmental agenda and the company plans to plant some five million trees along the route of the cable between Kampala and Kigali.

"We call ourselves environmentalists first and then technology savvy scientists second," Fred Sewe, the Managing Director Green Future said.

"For every metre of ground that we lay our fibre optic cables, we shall plant two indigenous trees. Our objective is to plant and nurture to maturity at least five to six million indigenous trees between Kampala and Kigali by the end of 2009," he stressed.

Green Future was among the groups of companies that laid down fibre between Mombasa and Bungoma in Kenya. Green Future developed the remaining distance to Kampala and that link enabled Uganda to be the only inland country to be part of the global information superhighway when Seacom went live last month.Since December 2007, Green Future has been involved in surveillance and resolution of faults arising from fibre optic cuts all over East Africa.

Sewe said that along the way from Kampala to Kigali, Green Future will employ at least 100,000 people.

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