East African Fibre Summit: SEACOM just the start

The communications revolution that begins with the SEACOM cable going live today is the spark for the first East African Fibre Conference, to be held in Nairobi in September. The conference agenda shows that the SEACOM cable is just the first of many changes to come …

The first East African Fibre Conference will be held at the Laico Regency Hotel in Nairobi over 22-23 September.

Announcing the conference, Sean Moroney, Chairman of AITEC Africa, organizers of the event, said: ‚East Africa is on the eve on a communications revolution, which will be brought about by the landing of the region’s first undersea cables to the outside world this year. Governments and corporate users in the region need to prepare for the transition from a predominantly satellite-based communications infrastructure to one that is fibre cable-based.

‚There is also an urgent need for new approaches to financing and building out information and communication infrastructure to address large unmet demand for information and communication services. Technological innovation helps make these new approaches possible and more flexible approaches to financing, service delivery and regulation will make them effective and sustainable.‚

The East African Fibre Summit will provide a platform for all stakeholders to assess these exciting developments, the impact they will have on their organizations and the optimum technical implementation strategies to gain maximum benefit from the opportunities they represent.

It will provide practical business and technology briefings to empower resellers, service providers and users to maximise their returns on their existing investments in satellite technologies and how to extend their ROI over the transition period, with blended communication systems as fibre comes on stream. Hybrid systems will be the order of the day, with wireless broadband and VoIP also boosted substantially as available bandwidth multiplies dramatically over the coming years. Satellite and wireless technologies will still have a role to play, providing both data and VoIP services to business, residential, government and developmental users in both rural and urban settings.

The East African Fibre Summit will provide participants with answers to crucial technical and business questions, enabling them to make the right deployment decisions at a time when 3G technologies are making an increasing impact in the region, ahead of the new fibre era.

By providing a platform for regulators, policy-makers, vendors, service providers and users to network and share knowledge, the conference will act as a catalyst to stimulate take-up of the right technologies to multiply connectivity across East Africa.

The emphasis of the conference will be practical training and AITEC has assembled a faculty of international experts to share their in-depth knowledge on deploying fibre networks with delegates. These include Anders Comstedt, who was part of the management team that developed Sweden’s fibre network and has done extensive consultancy work on fibre systems in Africa. Anders will act as the conference chairman. Other keynote speakers, who will also be doing practical tutorials as part of the Summit, are David Rottmayer, President & CEO of Unicorn Communications in the USA and Siva Ramamoorthy, Director of Tejas Networks in India.

‚We are assembling a high-powered faculty for the Summit, which will provide the region’s ICT community with the high-level knowledge needed to make optimum use of this vital new asset for the development of the region,‚ said Moroney.

For full details of the conference, log on to www.aitecafrica.com or phone +254(0)20-2121028

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