Construction work was initially meant to last 18 months from the time the agreement is signed but Information permanent secretary Bitange Ndemo now says it will last half the time.
"The 18 months period was arrived at under the assumption that the tender would be awarded to one company. It should take much less time now that we have three companies doing the job," he said.
Construction of the terrestrial network is expected to precede the laying out of an undersea fibre optic cable linking Kenya to the rest of the world in mid 2009.The East Africa Marine Sytem is expected to land in the port of Mombasa by the first quarter of 2009.
The terrestrial network is to link all parts of Kenya to the global network of high speed Internet.
Fibre optic cable network is expected to reduce the cost of doing business in the rural areas by easing communication and providing affordable and faster means of communication.
Other than the business sector, other services such us e-government, e-learning and even telemedicine is expected to be rolled out.
The laying out of the $60 million cable has been split in three sections, namely Western Kenya, Coast and North Eastern region and Central region which will be handled by each of the three companies.
Sagem is expected to lay out fibre optic cable network at the Coast and Northern part of the country, Huawei will handle Nairobi and central area while ZTE will handle western Kenya which runs from the Tanzania border post of Namanga to Lokichoggio.
The nod follows contract award and tendering of 5000 kilometres national optical fibre backbone infrastructure that will run across the various regions in the country and connect to the regions with the undersea cable.
Kenya currently relies heavily on satellite to route international traffic and locally but which is considered expensive.
Source: All Africa
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