Monday, June 22, 2009

Rwanda Plans to Join Kenya's TEAMS

The Rwandan government is negotiating a deal to connect the landlocked
country's telecoms network to The East African Marine System (TEAMS)
international submarine cable, which landed at Mombasa earlier this
month. Science and technology minister Romain Murenzi told Rwandan
newspaper The New Times that he had delegated officials from the
Rwanda Development Board (RDB) to discuss with Kenyan authorities the
possibility of establishing a cross-border fibre-optic link to the
cable system.

Last month Rwanda received a USD24 million regional infrastructure
grant from the World Bank to improve network capacity and broadband
connectivity and to lower the cost of international transmission. In
October 2008 the government awarded a USD40 million contract to South
Korean telco KT Corp to construct a national fibre-optic backbone.
Cellco MTN Rwanda and telco Rwandatel are already represented in
another ongoing East African submarine cable project, the EASSy
consortium.

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