Editor,

I would like to make clarifications to the article, "More than 400,000 Data Subscribers in Rwanda says RURA,” that run in The New Times on Friday October 29, 2010. The report quotes RURA to the effect that Altech Stream Rwanda (ASR) has 0.10 percent market share yet ASR provides broadband capacity to corporate entities like Tigo, Embassies, NGOs and the Government of Rwanda.

ASR now proudly boasts of being the first to connect to the submarine cables with Seacom and Teams and as a start up our philosophy has mainly been focused on corporate companies as we move very soon to the mass market. ASR wants to define the term "BROADBAND” to mean the same in Rwanda as it means in the Developed World.

However, the raw figures from RURA were without analysis and quite misleading to the layman. ASR now provides fiber capacity to most of the Government and its institutions through the RCIP project worth about Rwf1 billion for six months.

Now in counting customers, this is just one client as is Tigo, ORINFOR, CSR, BK and the over 300 other clients. Please let us not confuse readers with GPRS, 3G, etc with real Broadband capacity.

Sam K. Nkusi
Chairman ASR
sam.nkusi@altechstream.rw