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WEST AFRICA/BROADBANDBack
[Published: Tuesday July 13 2010]

 $ 700m West African broadband project

A consortium of operators headed by France Telecom is to have a submarine fibre optic cable laid at a cost of $ 700 million to serve 23 West and Southern African countries, giving some of them broadband internet connectivity. The new cable, which is 17,OOO-km long with a 40-giga-bit capacity, will link Penmarc'h (Finistere) to Cape Town in South Africa, and will be commissioned in the first half of 2012, France Telecom and Alcatel Lucent announced in separate statements.

This is not the first submarine cable to run along the African coast but it is the first time a cable has served so many countries on the continent, Alcatel-Lucent's director of submarine network activity, Philippe Dumont, told AFP.

For seven of the 23 - Mauritania, The Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sao Tome and Equatorial Guinea - it will be the first time they have had broadband connectivity via submarine cable. To date, their broadband access has been by satellite. Connection costs were exorbitant and the connections themselves very slow and unreliable.


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