Rwanda makes it mandatory for internet providers to share bandwidth

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By   
March 4th, 2012

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Ignace Gatare, Rwandan Minister in Charge of ICT (image via: itnewsafrica.com)

Following the internet slowdown caused by the service disruption on three major undersea cables on the East African coast, the Rwandan telecoms regulator, RURA, and ICT ministry,  have issued a directive that requires internet providers in the country to share bandwidth.

According to a report on Kenyan news website The East African, the purpose of the new requirements is for providers to give their customer seamless redundancy and guaranteed service when there are major disruptions of international bandwidth.

“All operators will be required to provide a guaranteed level of service to their client by accessing the pool bandwidth in the event of major catastrophes,” Dr. Ignace Gatare, the Rwandan Minister in charge of ICT is quoted in the article. “It also ensures efficient management of Rwanda internet resources. The regulator will ensure that there is sufficient bandwidth in the country to meet our national requirements”

You can read more about this story  here and here.

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  • Bhinikwa

    Brilliant…though it might encourage unscrupulous isp’s to relax in ringfencing their networks against outage. How do you determine when to share, what will be defined as disaster therefore time to share. I hope here we have finally made agreements on base station sharing.

  • Ben

    Totally crazy. No incentive to invest in redundancy or chose the best backbone provider. Just rely on your competitors being forced by government to bail you out when you make poor strategy decisions on who you buy bandwidth from.

  • Chirau

    The interesting thing about bandwidth is it is a man made good which yet to reach the level of an essential need, that’s a positive step in Rwanda as this measure aims to promote  viability of the ISP business, website links don’t belong an individual service provider and internet access is something that should be readily available at all times when it is possible.