Somalia is set to get a high-speed broadband access after Somcable struck a deal worth over US$3 million to offer the services via the fibre-through-the-air (FTTA) technology.
“Previously in Somaliland, internet speeds were very slow. Most people in the country could only use the internet during the daytime, quite often at peak times the whole system would just shut down,” said Michael Cothill, Somcable CEO.
Somcable, a wholesale backbone distributor and fibre-optic operator across Africa, says that the new FTTA technology will guarantee Somaliland users download speeds of up to 100Mbps, and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps via LTE technology.
“There was around 400Mbits throughput and providing this to a sizeable population was a challenge; the average person was experiencing speeds of around 64Kbps,” added Cothill.
Somcable says that laying of the full fibre grid in the country was not possible, as the infrastructure has not been developed in a way that could allow for the same. The company therefore opted to use a multi-gigabit wireless solutions provider Bluwan’s FTTA technology for the connectivity.
Fibre-optic cables will be laid from North Africa to the nearby Djibouti. From there, Bluwan FTTA Access solution will be used to transmit the signals via several outdoor antennas.
FTTA beams microwaves from the transmission hub wirelessly to the antennae on the rooftops of premises, and then uses a cable connection from the antenna into the home through a Bluwan box, which in turn delivers Wi-Fi and LAN connectivity.
The solution will also allow users to experience HDTV, as each transmission hub is able to provide up to 8Gbps throughput in a 360-degree 5kilometre radius, delivering average constant speeds of 2-100Mbps to thousands of people.
