Government has finalised negotiations with undersea fibre-optic cable operator SEACOM where the latter will deliver the Synchronous Transport Module (STM-1) in Rwanda on Saturday November, 2009.

The 155 Mbs capacity will be delivered to government’s owned Internet Service Provider (ISP) New Artel Rwanda through Uganda Telecom’s (UTL) Point-of-Presence (PoP) Rwandatel.

According to the deal, SEACOM will deliver extra 620 Mbs after ten working days.

In an exclusive interview with New Artel‘s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Francis Karemera, he said that SEACOM hired UTL to extend the international broadband capacity to Rwanda from Kampala.

"There will be no configuration in Rwandatel, its just passing through their PoP Rwandatel,” he said.

New Artel will offer 155 Mbps to Kigali Metropolitan Network to connect ministries as the priority, universities and districts.

Kigali Metropolitan Network aims to connect 97 government agencies in Kigali and 226 government agencies in districts. It will link 36 main nodes in both Kigali city and in all the 30 districts.

"Government had requested for more capacity but UTL ability is limited because it’s very tricky to transport using Microwave, it is easy with the fiber,” Karemera said.

It is said that from Kampala to Masaka (Uganda) the link is through Microwave while from Masaka to Mbarara it is overhead power line and then from Mbarara to Gatuna it is through the fibre link.

It is expected that once Rwanda is connected to the undersea cable, it will have access to the high speed and affordable International bandwidth. 

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