CC image courtesy of Aftab Uzzaman, on Flickr.
Kenya’s rainy season tends to unearth certain parts of trenched cables, according to Safaricom’s Thibaud Rerolle.
Speaking at the LTE Africa conference in Cape Town yesterday, Rerolle discussed the challenges of optimising backhaul.
Rerolle referred to fibre as a 90 per cent people project due to the fact that many discussions have to take place with various entities to resolve issues with communities.
“This has been quite difficult in terms of acquisition of right of way, Kenya is a place where we lack… regulation or concentration of point of contacts with the various bodies.” said Rerolle, who also said the introduction of a new government in Kenya presents a set of unique challenges.
Furthermore, Rerolle said challenges in the optimisation of backhaul in Kenya includes a lack of documentation plans for urban centres and non-standard deployments.
With regards to the challenges in microwave (MW) spectrum acquisition, Rerolle said it is a high frequency cost, but also the way in which spectrum is allocated.
“We have in Kenya, allocation which is on a first come, first serve basis… regarding the usage of the needs, which is creating a lot of constraints,” said Rerolle.
Rerolle said the spectrum shared resource is very limited or insufficient.
