The Herald reports this morning that TelOne, the state owned fixed telephone operator, has completed the fibre backbone project to connect Harare directly to an Internet fibre cable coming out of Mozambique. According to the article the official commissioning of the optic fibre will be done ‘soon’. Probably means end of January latest.
There are no details in the article about the total bandwidth capacity TelOne will bring into the country through this cable or where it’s buying the capacity from. Our guess is Telecomunicações de Moçambique (TDM), Mozambique’s national telecommunications and internet service provider. TDM has a direct connection to the Seacom EASSy undersea fibre cable at the Maputo shores. Update: Both TDM and TelOne are EASSy shareholders through WOICC, a consortium that owns 29% majority shareholding in EASSy.
This effectively makes TelOne the second operator in Zimbabwe to connect to an international optic fibre cable bringing high speed Internet into the country. Well, third actually; Africom has confirmed at some events in a strangely subtle way that it’s already connected to the TDM fibre on the same route. The first Zim telco to make a handshake with an international fibre cable was state owned backbone fibre provider PowerTel when it connected to the Botswana Telecommunications (BTC) fibre, back in March this year.
TelOne was able to execute the national priority project through a US$7 million national budget allocation this year.
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9 comments
Editor, you wld know better that TelOne is a shareholder in EASSY (a WB sponsored project) headquarted in Nairobi, so why the guesswork abt SEACOM ?
correct. how did we miss that one! thanks a mil.
The Whoooooooooosh speed is coming soon, I will be giving my wife a new laptop with webcam so that i can conference with all family whenever…….. I think we are getting into exciting times.
This is a welcome move. I hope this will a long way in ensuring that more and more services are rolled out on the fiber platform.
this means that Telone can stop using their OLD Mazoe Earth station. this fibre must improve Telone operations and internet speed.
this is a good move, but we hope the pricing is going to be reasonable. We are sick of the big brother behavior of some ISP
Can somebody in the know answer me this: If the econet (or telone) fibre optic cable passes right in front of my doorstep (house, school, business, or remote growth point), is it possible to “tap” into this fibre or is it like living under a 330kV ZESA line without electricity (so near and yet so far)?
Marek, just phone econet or telone and ask them. They will give you an accurate answer. We might give you theoretically correct positions. “Some things are theoretical possibilities, but practical absurdities”