broadband strategies handbook.pdf - Khazar University

able to deploy local access broadband infrastructure, performance is affectedby slow international connectivity. Where connectivity exists, cable theftcontinues to be a major problem for reliability. In addition, there are relativelyfew national IXPs in the region, forcing even intraregion traffic to behauled outside the region for switching and then sent back.Until 2009, South Atlantic 3/South Africa Far East (SAT3/SAFE) was theonly major regional submarine optic cable serving the continent, and it waslimited to a few countries on the west coast. Other countries had to usemore costly and slower satellite links. This has changed dramatically sincethe arrival of several new undersea cable systems—The East African MarineSystem (TEAMS), Southern and East African Cable System (SEACOM), andEastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy)—including the first systemto the region’s east coast (that is, TEAMS). Total capacity rose by a factorof 8.5 in 2009, and additional planned cables are expected to increaseundersea capacity to over 20 terabits per second (Tbit/s) by 2012. 14International connectivity is just part of the supply chain. Sub-SaharanAfrican countries also need to ensure that bandwidth gets disbursedthroughout the country, and, in the case of the region’s landlocked countries,national backbones must be in place to connect to neighboringcountries. PPPs may be helpful to generate the necessary investment andto ensure an effective and open-access operating arrangement. TheKenyan government, for example, has supported open access to backboneinfrastructure in various ways. It encouraged operators to participatein the TEAMS undersea cable and has also pursued public-privatepartnerships for national backbone construction. It is now contemplatingthe same for the construction of broadband wireless networks usingLong-Term Evolution (LTE) technology. See the Kenya case study at theend of this chapter.At the local access level, mobile broadband holds great promise.However, outside of a few countries, the region has yet to exploit this ona significant scale. Around two dozen Sub-Saharan African countrieshad commercially deployed 3G networks at the end of 2010, with around9 million subscriptions.Few African countries have elaborated a specific broadband policy. Ifmentioned at all, broadband is touched upon in overall sector strategies.One exception is South Africa, where the Broadband Policy for South Africawas published in July 2010 (South Africa, Department of Communications2010). Defining broadband as speeds of at least 256 kbit/s, the governmenthas identified two targets for 2019: all inhabitants to be within 2 kilometersof a public broadband access point and a household broadband penetrationrate of 15 percent.314 Broadband Strategies Handbook