Internet service providers (ISPs) in Algeria have asked the government to liberalise the national fibre network and Algeria’s international landing station, Pyramid Research (PR), a firm that tracks telecommunications globally, said Tuesday.
According to PR, Algeria’s operators said that such a move was necessary in order to bring to an end state-owned Algerie Telecom’s monopoly and the lack of development of online services under the telecommunications company.
At the end of June 2012, Algeria was home to approximately 870,000 broadband subscribers, more than 99 percent of which are believed to be controlled by Algerie Telecom.
Meanwhile, Cameroon’s Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Jean-Pierre Biyiti bi Essam, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Funke Opeke, CEO of Main One Cable Company, to establish a landing station for the submarine cable system in the country.
Nigerian-owned Main One Cable Company was incorporated in November 2006 with the aim of installing a new fibre-optic cable system linking West Africa to Europe to increase capacity and lower costs for international and intra-Africa communications.
As well as the landing stations in Nigeria (Lagos), Ghana (Accra) and Portugal (Seixal), the system has branching units in Morocco, Canary Islands, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire, while the second phase of the project will see the system extended to South Africa.
PR said the 7,000-km cable went live on 1 July, 2010, with a design capacity of 1.92Tbps.
Cameroon has been connected to the SAT3 submarine cable since 1999 and in June 2012 the government signed an agreement with South Africa’s MTN to use the West African Cable System (WACS), which went live in May this year.
