Concord Times (Freetown)
Bhoyy Jalloh
23 July 2008
Freetown — International call rates in Africa may drop by as much as 80 per cent in a few months, going by a gateway and submarine cable operators' pledges.
The rate charged at present by local operators in Sierra Leone is around 50 cents (Le1500 per minute) but this may drop to equivalent of Le200 per minute under the new regime.
The operators rose from a meeting in Accra, Ghana, recently with the conclusion that if Africa contributes only two per cent of global traffic yearly, something must be fundamentally wrong. They traced this to high cost of bandwidth, which should be reduced very significantly.
They identified high cost of connectivity and decided to also correct same.
According to the experts and operators, if Africa contributes only two per cent of global international traffic for voice and data transmission, then the onus to increase the figure is on those who manage and control telecommunications services on the continent.
At the end of the first West African Information and Communications Technology (ICT) roadmap opportunities conference in the Ghanaian capital, they affirmed that only operators in the sector could remedy the situation.
They plan to provide a minimum of two megabits per second (2mbit/s) transmission. But Main one cable says it will provide a capacity of 1.28terabits/s.
The operators agreed that the cost of Eth Interface converter (El) voice and data multiplexer should drop to $400 from its all time high cost of $5,000 per month.
With this, cost of international calls, would automatically drop to below about Le200 per minute.
The current rates stand a major disadvantage for network operators who have had to pay $5,000 per month for the El and consequently pass the cost on to end users, their subscribers.
Currently, Nigeria's NITEL holds the forte with its South Atlantic 3, (SAT-3) West African Submarine cable which links the sub region to the rest of the world through Portugal and Spain to South Africa with connections to South Atlantic and Far East Asia (SAFE).
Nigeria is one of the 33 national investors in SAT-3.
First of its kind, it was until recently the only choice for submarine optic fibre link between Africa and the rest of the world.
The U.S. Trade and Development Agency as well as the Department of State, under the President's Digital Freedom Initiative, along with the Government of Ghana co-sponsored the "West African ICT Roadmap to Opportunities" Conference in Accra to engage policy makers, project sponsors, financiers, and technology providers to match the sub-region needs with solutions.
The conference convened top business and governmental decision makers from 11 African countries including Ghana, Nigeria and the U.S. to promote dialogue on key issues including regional infrastructure integration, deregulation, privatisation, public sector initiatives and telecom solutions.
Additional reports by Guardian newspaper of Nigeria.
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