Phone Card News
Alcatel-Lucent Signs TEAMs Deal, Work to Start in January
Alcatel-Lucent announced it will begin the construction of the 5,000 km East Africa Marine system (TEAMs) undersea cable in January 2008 with the completion date set for March 2009. The firm's COO Georges Krebs said during the signing of the construction agreement to lay the first telecoms cable connecting east Africa's coast with the rest of the world that the construction would open a new model of infrastructure growth in Africa. "This is a very special project. A new model has been established so that if the private sector is not capable, the government can step in. South Africa is also considering the same model," Krebs told a press briefing.
Kenyan officials said the construction of TEAMs would lower the cost of bandwidth to USD 500 per month from the current USD 6,000 per month. Information Ministry Permanent Secretary Bitange Ndemo said Kenya will sell bandwidth to Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Sudan through local private telecommunication firms interested in investing in the USD 100 million project. Ndemo said the UAE's Etisalat had already committed to take up a 15 percent share in the Kenyan project. Local operators such as Telkom Kenya, Safaricom and Econet, among others, would also be owning a piece of the project. Alcatel-Lucent won the USD 82 million tender in October to construct the submarine fibre-optic cable linking Kenya and the Arabian city of Fujairah.
Source:
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?id=196093
