Tuesday, 14 June 2011

Seacom Ltd., a company that operates a fibre-optic link in East Africa, said it was planning to extend the cable into Burundi, Southern Sudan and Somalia in cooperation with partners as demand for internet services continues to grow.

"We would like to expand our footprint," Julius Opio, the company's regional head, said. But he refused to give more details.

Opio said that the first country to be linked to the cable would be Brundi once it has installed 1,300 kilometres (810 miles) of fibre network next year. The cable would then be extended to Southern Sudan within a year of its independence, scheduled for July 9. Over the following two or three years, the cable will be extended to Somalia, he said.

The company currently has fibre-optic links in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya (where its east and north African office is based), Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, Opio said.

Source: Bloomberg