Botswana Fibre Network (BoFiNet) has signed another deal that covers providing Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited (BTCL) for the next five years with internet capacity to London and other destination through the West Africa Cable System (WACS) and East Africa Sea System (EASSY).
The contract is said to be for the next five year contract and worth P68 million per annum and in the five (5) years it is worth more than P300 million in total.
“We have a lot of capacity that we own and selling it as much as possible benefits us financially and assists us in being self-sustaining and re-invest to expand network reach to other parts of the country,” said BoFiNet Chief Executive Officer Mabua Mabua.
He pointed out that BoFiNet has completed the process of receiving all assets from BTCL in December 2013 and currently they are working around the clock to conclude some processes that will see the physical transfer fully implemented.
Mabua said that so far BoFiNet entry tariffs for the international and national capacity bandwidth, which are lower than pre October 2013 before BOFINET operations by between 30 percent to 70 percent will facilitate service providers to buy more capacity and pass the benefits to the customers which in turn leads to more bandwidth to the corporates and individuals.
He added that increased capacity and better internet quality to users will result in efficiencies in the economy and facilitate growth in sectors and areas such as tourism, mining particularly the DTC relocation, government automation of public services.
He revealed that BoFINET is working around the clock to negotiate with other international carriers to bring down the costs of procuring foreign transit capacities so that Botswana’s international connectivity costs and tariffs are further lowered. Mabua added that’s as BoFINET once the agreements with the international carriers are concluded we intend to further reduce tariffs for international connectivity in 2014-2015 to make Botswana more competitive.
“We expect the service providers to pass the benefit to users as much and as soon as possible. The outcome is much affordable and high internet capacity bandwidth to users and increased internet penetration for Botswana. We are also intending to extend our fibre to the user as much as possible starting in 2014-2015 with the business areas and corporates,” said Mabua.
He emphasised that BOFINET also intending to explore opportunities in the Data Centres services space into the future adding that they will also be looking at establishing a national and regional internet exchange to improve the internet experience in Botswana to match the standards of developed countries by leveraging excess capacity that we have both nationally through the backbone network, and internationally through WACS and EASSy.
“We have a lot of capacity that we own and selling it as much as possible benefits us financially and assists us in being self-sustaining and re-invest to expand network reach to other parts of the country,” said Mabua.
