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11 posts tagged connectivity
Rwanda signs 4G internet deal with South Korea firm - business daily africa
Rwanda on Monday signed a deal with South Korea’s largest telecoms provider KT Corp to roll out high-speed 4G Internet to most of its citizens within three years.
Rwanda, one of Africa’s fastest growing economies„ has laid more than 3,000km of fibre-optic cable since 2009 in a bid to develop a service based economy and become a regional leader in information communication technology (ICT).
Only around 8.3 per cent of the population have internet access at the moment, according to Rwandan officials.
“This agreement with KT marks a major milestone in Rwanda’s drive to become a modern, knowledge-based economy - and by expanding our information infrastructure, we will create jobs, support social progress and propel economic growth,” Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Rwanda’s Minister of Youth and ICT, said in a statement.
President John Dramani Mahama told law makers last month that the laying of a 600-kilometre rural-urban fibre optic broadband infrastructure from Ho in the eastern Volta Region to Bawku in the Upper East Region in the north has started.
In addition, President Mahama said, the government has set up the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) and is using the “Connect School Initiative” to connect all 38 Teacher Training Colleges to the Internet. It has already supplied at least 20 computers, along with the required peripherals such as UPS, printers, projectors and scanners to help support ICT training.
The ministry of communication is also supervising the connection of 26 Government-Assisted Technical Institutes to the Internet with similar supplies of ICT equipment as well as connecting 37 vocational training institutes to the internet. Government officials say these projects are not isolated as they are intended to complement the national e-government project.
The overall objective, communications minister Dr Edward Omani Boamah said, was to make “ICT one of the key drivers of national development.”
Dr Boamah said the e-government network is a turn-key project under a cooperation agreement between the government and the Peoples Republic of China, which is providing $127 million.
Rwanda has fastest broadband speeds in sub-Saharan Africa, survey shows - PC Advisor
The latest broadband speed results from Ookla’s NetIndex show that service providers in Rwanda currently offer download speeds of up to 7.28M bps, up from 3.28M bps six months ago. Those speeds overtake those offered in all other sub-Saharan African countries including Nigeria, Africa’s largest telecom market.
However, President Paul Kagame and the minister of Youth and ICT said that despite the ranking, there is a lot more that Rwanda needs to do. Kagame believes Rwanda still has a long way to go to improve the country’s broadband services for the benefit of the poor and those in remote rural areas.
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Informa Telecoms & Media’s recent survey, Africa Telecoms Outlook 2013, was presented last week at AfricaCom, the continent’s biggest ICT exhibition, based in Cape Town. The report, an optimistic one for Africa at large, included these findings:
1. Mobile broadband is the largest single revenue opportunity in Africa in both the immediate and longer term.
Informa forecasts mobile data revenue in Africa will reach $18.5 billion by 2016, accounting for 22% of the region’s total mobile service revenue – compared to 12% in 2011.
”Source itweb.co.za
Major African VC network launches private investing tools | memeburn
Venture Capital for Africa (VC4Africa), an online community of venture capitalists, angels and entrepreneurs, today announced the launch of new tools aimed at helping people raise funds for their startups.
The network, which is dedicated to building business on the African continent, claims that the new tools make private investment easy, secure and social. It also says that they allow entrepreneurs to register their funding needs.
These are then shared for investors, registered as part of the VC4Africa investor network, to review. Any investor interested in the venture can reportedly engage the entrepreneur for more details. and if they like the terms the venture is offering, step forward as a lead investor.
The venture then goes into fundraising mode for 90 days in which the entrepreneur and lead investor can attract additional support.
This is the next step in VC4Africa’s efforts to help close the startup-funding gap, bringing quality entrepreneurs and qualified investors closer together.
The participants in the first quarter of the conference have brainstormed their views on innovations and the role of broadband technology in Africa.
They have also discussed the future of the industry. The meeting further discussed the concrete steps the Broadband Commission can take to improve connectivity and the global trends challenging the same.
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Africa has passed Western Europe in the number of mobile connections during the final quarter of 2010, Wireless Intelligence reported on Thursday.
It comes as the telecom market on the continent continues to show marked improvement in both services and infrastructure, especially in North Africa. The new report said that African mobile connections reached 547.5 million during the final three months of 2010, up nearly 20 percent from the previous year.
In comparison, Western Europe reported 523.6 million connections, or an increase of less than one percent from 2009. Also, ARPU declined at a similar rate across both continents, down three percent in Europe and 3.29 percent in Africa.
According to the report, much of that slide was triggered by price wars in Kenya, Tanzania and Egypt.
”Source itnewsafrica.com
![smarterplanet:
The Coming Battle for Africa’s Internet
[Seneweb] is one of several laying links in what they hope could become as much as 100,000 miles of broadband wiring criss-crossing the world’s second-largest continent like the 21st century version of a transcontinental railway. The connections start with undersea cables and extend onshore towards 3G towers within reception range of the continent’s growing middle class.That burgeoning bourgeoisie is Africa’s lead variable, and Herlihy ballparks its current mass at 300 million people, each earning between $2,000 and $5,000 yearly — not always enough to keep a router in the living room lit, but certainly enough to pay off a BlackBerry bill. The service they enjoy, smoother than its American equivalent, runs off towers that are newer and more adaptable to data transfers, which is rendering Africa’s telecom transition — from a continent of voice phones to one of pocket PCs — more scalable than expected. “It’s just happening faster and faster than anybody could have imagined,” Herlihy says.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_litnfy3xTP1qzs4rbo1_500.jpg)
The Coming Battle for Africa’s Internet
[Seneweb] is one of several laying links in what they hope could become as much as 100,000 miles of broadband wiring criss-crossing the world’s second-largest continent like the 21st century version of a transcontinental railway. The connections start with undersea cables and extend onshore towards 3G towers within reception range of the continent’s growing middle class.
That burgeoning bourgeoisie is Africa’s lead variable, and Herlihy ballparks its current mass at 300 million people, each earning between $2,000 and $5,000 yearly — not always enough to keep a router in the living room lit, but certainly enough to pay off a BlackBerry bill. The service they enjoy, smoother than its American equivalent, runs off towers that are newer and more adaptable to data transfers, which is rendering Africa’s telecom transition — from a continent of voice phones to one of pocket PCs — more scalable than expected.
“It’s just happening faster and faster than anybody could have imagined,” Herlihy says.
Reblogged from smarterplanet
