New undersea cable to South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique brings high-speed internet to Eastern Africa
Friday, July 24, 2009
Finally, it's done! This has been a long time coming; I remember writing about the cables under construction back in February. For most websites dialup just doesn't cut it anymore, and high-speed internet is just about the difference between having access and no access at all. Simply playing a video on YouTube for example requires a fairly fast connection that Eastern Africa just didn't have until now.
According to the article, companies such as Tanesco (electricity), TTCL (communications), Tanzania Railways and Universities of Dar es Salaam and Dodoma are already benefiting from the new connection.
A part of the article also mentions that though prices have gone down for businesses from $3000 a month to $600 a month, ISPs are not lowering prices for average consumers but are instead offering increased bandwidth. Whether they can keep this up for long is hard to say, because the idea of lowering prices to average consumers as well may just be too tempting to one and this would cause the others to follow suit. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks/months.
The comments below the article are particularly interesting so be sure to take a look at them. Many have already begun to see an improvement in service, but certainly not all.
