TEAMs Cable Ship has set sail - 450kms covered...

Great news. The TEAMs cable ship - under contract with Alcatel-Lucent set sail from Fujairah, UAE on Thursday last week. As of today it has covered 450 kilometres at a rate of approximately 150 kilometres a day.

We are all looking forward to the cable finally landing in Mombasa - and hope and pray that the Somali pirates don't interfere with the progress of this noble venture.

East African Submarine Fiber Projects set to Trigger increased economic activity

So the pundits say that the impending arrival of at least to international submarine fibre cables at Mombasa - Kenya's coastal frontier - later this year is set to trigger a significant increase in economic activity. The Eastern African seaboard has been exclusively dependent upon satellite connectivity for linkage with the rest of the world, thus the advent of these cable systems will be a watershed for the region by bringing lower cost connectivity with many times better quality.

There is presently a flurry of activity in the East African region, with many operators deploying metro, regional, national and cross-border fibre optic networks. Parallel to this is the aggressive rollout of a slew of last-mile broadband access networks - presumably to ensure that as much of the bandwidth that comes off the submarine cables can be delivered directly to users.

Exciting times for sure!

Google Invests into Kenyan Mobile Messaging Company

It has started! Google is making direct investments into African
companies that hold the promise of providing the search giant with
inroads into the buzz, hype and business explosion that is Africa's
mobile industry.

Announcing the investment via their Google Africa blog http://google-
africa.blogspot.com/2008/08/announcing-new-investment-in-kenya.html -
Africa Office Lead Joseph Mucheru sounds quite upbeat about their
expectations and very clear on how he envisions SMS and related
mobile technologies as an avenue for future growth and applications.