Internet operators are exploiting the users with high costs, says Dr. Bitange Ndemo, the Permanent Secretary in the ministry for Information and Communications. He has given the operators a one month grace period to come up with realistic costs or else the Government will be forced to intervene. The more broad band available should be translated to easy Internet access: low cost.
The PS calls upon Kenyans to size the arrival of the fibre cable as an opportunity to match from being an oral society to be at per with the rest of the world. He was giving an opening adress during the first East African Fibre Conference which was held on 22-23 September, Nairobi.
The PS articulated that a lot has changed in the Government operations, ever since blog sites were embraced by Kenyans. Yes, with the fibre cable which is an information supper high way - Kenyans will be able to create a lot of local content.
"This is an area where will use science for better living," Ndemo says, "the digital villages will enable us get data that will be used to formulate our policies."
"Most of the time politicians talk without facts," the PS says,"this will enable us to match into issue based politics."
“East Africa is on the eve on a communications revolution," says Sean Moroney the Chairman of AITEC Africa who were the organizers of the summit, "which will be brought about by the landing of the region’s first undersea cables to the outside world this year. Governments and corporate users in the region need to prepare for the transition from a predominantly satellite-based communications infrastructure to one that is fibre cable-based.
“There is also an urgent need for new approaches to financing and building out information and communication infrastructure to address large unmet demand for information and communication services. Technological innovation helps make these new approaches possible and more flexible approaches to financing, service delivery and regulation will make them effective and sustainable.”
Ndemo says that the Digital Villages will be put up in every sub location across the country to enable Kenyans collect data from the villages - thus peoples needs can be addressed with the urgency they deserve."Rural ares are going to be the epicenter of Government operations."
The first patch of 15,000 youths from across the country are on training with the support of the World Bank, on local content collection. Generating local data will require money that will come from adverts. With detailed data collection our way of doing things and living will change drastically.
ICT is contributing up to 50 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in those governments that have embraced it fully. Thus the PS is challenging youths to creatively and inventively tap the fibre cable, harnessing its unlimited applications that are running through every sphere of daily living.
The fibre cable will provide practical business and technology briefings to empower resellers, service providers and users to maximise their returns on their existing investments in satellite technologies and how to extend their ROI over the transition period, with blended communication systems as fibre comes on stream. Hybrid systems will be the order of the day, with wireless broadband and VoIP also boosted substantially as available bandwidth multiplies dramatically over the coming years. Satellite and wireless technologies will not be rendered useless as they will be providing both data and VoIP services to business, residential, government and developmental users in both rural and urban settings.
The fibre cable will usher in technological innovations, says the former Head of Research and Consultancy, Faculty of Commerce at the University of Nairobi. Smaller enterprises are expected to the wheels of innovations such as Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook. Our universities are called to be incubation centres for inventors.
The fibre cable will accelerate Kenya to be a knowledge driven society. "Intelligence and ingenuity are called for," says Muriuki Mureithi, CEO for Summit Strategies, Kenya, "the limitation is one's capacity - as broadband is a passport to the cyber world."
It is projected that by 2012 all African Capital and major towns will be interconnected. Yes, all villages by 2015.ICT plays a very important role in jump starting social-economic development. But by 2006 Kenya was ranked 153 in the world map in internet access, 27 in Africa, notwithstanding leading in East Africa.
Fibre cable will provide high capacity to local communities, says Mureithi, enabling application such as e-commerce, e-learning, and social interaction at the local, national and including international level.
He adds that the fibre cable will enable communities to undertake government business outsourcing work to gain income by exploiting community networks.
It's a challenge for local communities to develop innovative catalog of the services they can be able to offer, determine appropriate ownership model civil societies and establish networks to share experiences – lobbying at grass root level. Institution of learning should develop curricula that is appropriate to various communities as they can reach them on line.
The East African Fibre Summit provided participants with answers to crucial technical and business questions, enabling them to make the right deployment decisions at a time when 3G technologies are making an increasing impact in the region, ahead of the new fibre era.
The summit pitched a platform for regulators, policy-makers, vendors, service providers and users to network and share knowledge: acting as a catalyst to stimulate take-up of the right technologies to multiply connectivity across East Africa.
International experts who included Anders Comstedt, a management consultant form Sweden, whose blue print Kenya adapted in ICT harnessing stressed on the need for in-depth knowledge and practical training on fibre cable deployment. He encourages many Kenyan to subscribe to Internet usage as this will increase the network value for other users.
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