Impact
Currently, East Africa is the only region in the world that has neither intra-African nor direct international cable network access. The region instead relies on expensive satellite communication. Data costs in the country are among the highest in the World with costs of up to $7000 per megabit of bandwidth. The cable is expected to reduce costs to below $500 per megabit, although UUNET Kenya believes this drastic drop in price to be overestimated and that price drops will only occur once other cables, namely SEACOM and EASSy, are completed to create price competition between them.
A number of regional governments and private sector investors have shown interest in the project. Governments interested in purchasing bandwidth are Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi.
Kenya hopes to become a bigger player in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) as India has done in the recent past. Kenya's nascent call center business has grown from employing 200 people in the year 2006 to 3,000 this year, despite relying on expensive satellite-based communications. Kenya's Ministry of Information and Communications Permanent Secretary Dr Bitange Ndemo has said that in order for the BPO sector to compete, the government must increase its bandwidth to 500 megabits per second by the end of the year (2007) and subsidize costs until the cable is completed.
Read more about this topic: TEAMS (cable System)
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