Movitel, Mozambique's third mobile phone operator is in talks with
Tanzania's National ICT Broadband Backbone with the view to have the facility
reach the country's border.
The NICTBB from Dar es Salaam reaches Mtwara but Movitel wants Tanzania
to push it to the remaining distance towards the border so that the company can
get its backup for its existing operations in Mozambique.
The NICTBB Technical
Cordinator, Engineer Anita Chingumbe,
told 'Daily News' that the two are negotiating and that a feasibility
study has been carried out in the area.
"The company is in talks with NICTBB on how Mozambique can be
connected from the Umoja bridge at Mtambaswala border with Tanzania. The talks
may result into a deal," she said.
She said what triggered Movitel's
interest was when - the state-owned Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited
(TTCL) closed a $6.7-million, 10-year
deal to supply 1.244 gigabytes of internet bandwidth to Rwanda.
It made Tanzania the first East African Community member (EAC to start
selling internet bandwidth to other EAC states thanks to the laying of the
international submarine fiber-optic cable systems Eassy and Seacom.
"They
want to get resilience incase their network goes down. We have already done the
feasibility study and we see it viable to take it to the border post from either
Masasi or Mtwara," she said at the ongoing 36th Dar es Salaam
International Trade Fair (DITF).
She said they have finished a feasibility study at border post with
Mozambique, adding that Tanzania is safer because it has rings through regions
and districts which makes it resilient even if one line were to be cut off.
In
the region's context, she said, Tanzania's network also has guarantee on
availability and reliability of 99.8 per cent as compared to the region which
is below 70 per cent.
"This technology is not only resilient to bad weather, including
rain, but it possesses better characteristics such as high bandwidth capacity,
compactness, low transmission losses, high signal security, immunity to
interference and system reliability," she said.
To target potential
markets of all the surrounding countries, she said already, border posts where
the cable have reached include Manyovu and Burundi (to serve Burundi), Rusumo
border post (to serve Rwanda), Mutukula (to serve Uganda), Sirali, Namanga and
Horohoro border posts to serve Kenya, Tunduma border point for Zambia and
Kasumulo border post for Malawi.
Other landlocked countries, she said, may express interest to use the
newly built national ICT backbone so as they can get international links via the
submarine cables that landed at the Indian Ocean shores recently. Such
countries include Zambia, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi.
She added that it has resulted
in an increase of mobile phone users from less than 100,000 in the late 1990s
to about 20 million in December 2010, which translates to around 50 per cent
teledensity. This contributed about 25 per cent to the national GDP in
2009/2010 financial year.
Source: The Daily News,http://www.dailynews.co.tz, reported by Orton Kiishweko
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