Gabon Wagers on High-Speed Internet

Gabon wants to be a player in the digital economy on the African continent and a regional hub hosting enterprises in the sector. The authorities of the middle-income African country have announced this goal in their quest to diversify Gabon’s economy and reduce its dependence on oil.

At the TransformAfrica summit on new technologies held in Kigali, Rwanda, in late 2013, Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, declared that Gabon’s connection to the Central African high-speed fiber optic network by 2015 would mark the “first step of a journey toward digital independence.” The president stated, “If we want to change the lives of our citizens, we need to act quickly to make ICTs a top priority.”

According to ARCEP, Gabon’s Postal and Electronic Communications Regulatory Agency, out of a population of 1.6 million, Gabon had only 497,371 Internet subscribers (mobile and fixed) at the end of 2012, and high-speed 3G and 4G mobile connections were not yet available. Thus the country lags far behind its goal to increase Internet speed for the public. Development of high-speed mobile and fixed Internet in Gabon cannot be achieved without fiber optic infrastructure to facilitate high-quality, low-cost transmission of digital applications, services, and content to citizens and businesses across the country.

source: www.worldbank.org

project link to take faster internet to kampala

Google has announced Project Link, an initiative to build a super-fast, high-capacity fibre network to enable any local mobile operator or Internet service provider (ISP) to connect more people in Kampala to a faster, more reliable Internet. Google says it chose to build in the modern capital of Kampala, Uganda, a dense urban centre where over three million people are currently limited to pre-broadband speeds.

In its Africa blog, Google says Project Link’s network is available to connect providers to long-distance fibre lines, equipping them with near-unlimited capacity to build and expand services to Ugandans.

Google says: “By making this connection, we’re strengthening a crucial piece of the Internet supply chain. Some parts of the chain are already strong: undersea cables are bringing data to Africa’s shores and mobile providers are expanding services across the continent. We’ve now built quality infrastructure in between these points to deliver the speed and capacity that supports the latest and greatest of the web.”

Project Link enables local providers to offer new mobile data plans or high-speed Internet for office buildings and universities, and support newer technologies as they come to market.