Internet speed in The Gambia and more than 20
countries in Africa and Europe is projected to increase more than 50 times, with
the cost expected to reduce. And also
the cost of telephone calls is also projected to significantly reduce as the Africa
Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable goes live on 15th December
2012.
Gambia ACE stakeholders, who
briefed journalists on the new development on Thursday at the GRTS building on
MDI Road, said the ACE submarine cable will allow cheap, fast and reliable
international calls, access to the internet at unprecedented and revolutionary
speeds, all at a lesser cost.
This access to huge bandwidth at a cheaper
rate that ACE is expected to bring to The Gambia will empower every sector of
the country including, but not limited to, telecommunications, banking,
education, health, and agriculture.
“The speed of internet is going to be like a superhighway. It’s going to be 100 times faster when the
ACE reaches its capacity, although the initial speed is going to be 50 to 60
times faster than the current speed.
It’s going to be ‘Fat fat’; as you click, it responses,” said Jay
Karthik, Chief Technician of QCell, which is part of the Special Purpose Vehicle
(SPV), a joint venture of public-private sector members established by the
government for the purpose of Gambia’s participation in the ACE project.
The conference was meant to announce to Gambians the
launching of ACE in The Gambia on 19 December 2012 and the benefits
of the submarine cable to almost all the sectors of the economy.
The ACE submarine cable has a design capacity of
5.12 Tbps and is supported by the new 40 Gbps wavelength division multiplexing
(WDM) technology.
Mr Karthik again: “If I am to translate this to the
understanding of a layman, I will give this analogy: It’s like if you have one lane for a major
highway with too many vehicles then obviously there will be traffic jam but if
you have eight lanes at the same place then the vehicles will be running at a
faster rate. With the ACE submarine
cable, we are going to have a superhighway with a broadband speed.”
Hussein Diab, Information Systems director at
Africell, a member of the SPV, explained that currently The Gambia is buying
its bandwidth from Sonatel in Senegal, which is buying through a
middleman. “So the prices of internet
and calls are a little bit high but with the ACE submarine cable, The Gambia
will not be going to buy from any middleman,” he said.
“We used to buy from Sonatel so by the time we sell
it to the final consumers, the prices are a little bit high. But with ACE, there will not be issue of
buying from a third party, so the prices will come down and the speed will
faster.”
