Telecom Namibia, the state telecommunications company plans to construct a fibre based network to connect all 14 regional capitals in the southern African nation.
Communications manager, Oiva Angula said in the capital Windhoek that the construction of the primary fibre route to connect 14 regional administrative capitals is already completed.
“Construction of a secondary fibre route to regional administrative capitals is also done. The outstanding link is scheduled to be completed in March. The secondary route is important to ensure that the regional administrative capitals remain connected in cases of failures on the primary route,” said Angula.
The project is being rolled out in phases with the first phase involving the establishment of the core network to connect the central government to the administrative capitals of all 14 regions.
“During this phase of the project, Telecom Namibia has invested about NAD70m ($6.1m). This phase is scheduled to be completed during the first quarter of 2015, depending on a number of factors outside Telecom Namibia’s control,” he said.
The next phase of the project involves the establishment of high-speed fibre connections to link up individual government offices, ministries and agencies to the high speed fibre-based government core network.
“During the latter phase, Telecom Namibia is expected to make further investments in last mile fibre optic connections,” added Angula.
The network is required to support the distribution of West Africa Cable System (WACS) in Namibia. WACS is a submarine communications cable linking South Africa with the United Kingdom along the west coast of Africa that was constructed by Alcatel-Lucent.
Angula said Telecom is ahead of the targets set to be achieved towards 2017 with kilometres of fibre rolled out reaching 12 060 km against a target of 9 755 km. The number of broadband ports available is now 92 000 against a target of 40 594.
Telecom Namibia is also connected to two other major submarine fibre cable routes, the SAT3 and SEACOM, which Angula said enhances the reliability of Namibia’s connectivity to the global system.
In its mobile phone market operations, Angula said the company achieved a network roll out of 259 base stations last year.
Since inception in 1992, Telecom has invested invested NAD4bn ($351m) in infrastructure, services and business support systems.
