East African Business Week (Kampala)
Edris Kisambira
13 December 2008
Kampala — Uganda's parliament has approved a US$75 million loan for the second and third phases of the national data transmission backbone.
The first phase, which covered Uganda's capital city and three other urban areas cost some US$30 million and is the basis for the next two phases.
The first phase has also resulted in the establishment of an integrated e-government platform that is meant to ease and cut communication costs across government.
"As I speak, parliament has approved funding for the second and third phase of the national backbone," Dr. Ham Mulira, the minister of ICT said.
Mulira however revealed that a fourth phase has been designed and will be included to link and cover a lot of northern Uganda that was not initially included in the original design of the broadband infrastructure. Northern Uganda is coming out of war.
The backbone is aimed at improving communication in the country through the availability of cheap and easy to access bandwidth, improving network coverage and the quality of service at low cost for areas that are economically unviable for the telecoms.
It will also provide basic communication to rural communities and help government improve service delivery in the fields of health, education and agriculture, among others.
It is hoped it will spur e-government, interconnecting different government institutions and departments in order to exploit their full potential, reduce government domestic expenditure on public administration and increase the speed of government operations and services, through coordinated and harmonized government programmes implementation.
The integrated e-government platform has interconnected ministries, government institutions and departments in order to exploit their full potential and to reduce government domestic expenditure on public administration.
The first phase, which covers the capital Kampala (majority of central government functions are centered here), Entebbe, Bombo and Jinja was completed last year.
Internet videophones with videoconference facilities have been installed in all government ministries and departments/agencies.
Also, communication software for email services to minimize the cost of communication is now possible. A unit has been established within the ministry to oversee implementation of the national data transmission backbone.
China is funding the project with a $106 million loan, with counterpart funding of $5 million from the Uganda government.
The loan is taken from the China Exim bank and technology company, Huawei Technologies is executing the job.
In the original plans, the 2,500 km backbone was expected to cover 28 districts in the country with major towns acting as the switching centres for the backbone.
Potential users of the bandwidth include financial institutions, mobile telephone operators, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), television operators, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), schools and others.
The backbone will link into the East African Backhaul System (EABS) project - a joint venture among operators from Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya that will link the five countries to the East African Submarine System (EASSy) cable.
Founded in 1988, Huawei Technologies is China's largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment.
The company makes a broad range of products, including core voice and data switching platforms for communications service providers.
Huawei also makes optical networking systems, wireless products, corporate networking equipment, network management and messaging software.
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