Gilat Satcom has reiterated the need for countries along the East African coast to have more satellite bandwidth to support the existing fibre optic network, saying the submarine cables have shown their vulnerability.
Bridget Fishleigh, public relations lead at the satellite and fibre solutions company, told HumanIPO the various recent outages had disabled the ICT sector in the affected East African countries.
“As you probably know, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania and Zambia are connecting to the internet over the EASSy cable,” Fishleigh said.
“A few months ago this cable was down for four days and all these countries were off the internet, off all global communication. Can you even dare to imagine New York City off the internet and off all global communication for even one day?”
She added the region should invest in satellite to backup fibre optic technology if the countries are to be seen in the eyes of investors as serious at protecting and attracting their investment.
Fishleigh said: “And they must do it ‘yesterday’. We are not naive and we are well aware about the difference in the maturity of the global communication systems between these countries and western ones, but in our little piece of heaven at the places that are in our hands, we are doing our best effort so our customer will enjoy it today.”
HumanIPO reported last week marketing director Eran Yoran said the region needed to bridge the growing gap between broadband supply and the demand for stable broadband.
“There is still a huge gap between the growing demands for broadband in Africa and the ability of the industry to provide a high-quality service. In particular, we see a great need in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania and Zambia,” Yoran said.
“We are investing heavily so that we can provide businesses in Africa with a fully-redundant extremely stable broadband network with excellent QoS.”
