[kictanet] KENYA’S TEAMS FIBRE PROJECT LOOKS SET TO DRAW IN OTHER COUNTRIES

[alice]

 From Balancing Act:

KENYA’S TEAMS FIBRE PROJECT LOOKS SET TO DRAW IN OTHER COUNTRIES

At the East African Broadband Workshop in Kigali on 8-9 May, five 
Governments signed a communiqué that may well be the first step on the 
road to the widening out of participation in the TEAMS fibre project to 
all East African Community countries: these now include: Burundi, Kenya, 
Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Signatories included three Ministers 
(Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda) and two senior officials (Burundi and 
Tanzania). The event was organised by the Rwandan Ministry of 
Infrastructure and the US Digital Freedom Initiative.

The communiqué noted that:”Progress must be made to bring undersea fibre 
optic cable systems and backbone connections to the region as quickly as 
possible.” In a diplomatically worded statement clearly aimed at the 
faltering NEPAD sponsored project it stated that all fibre projects 
“should aim to meet the requirements of all public and private 
stakeholders.”

The Kenyan Government requested the nomination of technical teams from 
East African countries and said it would brief regional governments 
about the technical, legal and investment details in 4-6 weeks time. 
Furthermore, the signatories agreed that the EAC should adopt “an open 
access policy for backbone networks and agree that they should be 
operated on a non-discriminatory manner based on a cost model that is 
sustainable, which supports regional interconnectivity and allows for 
high end usage that is affordable to the end users within three months.”