...
Once the fibres reach the landing point the traffic has to be distributed within the region. The maps below show the backbones available or being planned for the North-East, East and Southern Africa. They are from the FEAST project. There are also maps from Hamilton Research 2009. There a summary of fibre optic backbones in Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda,
North East Africa backbone | East African backbone | Southern Africa backbone |
---|---|---|
| | |
and an earlier map below:
Beyond the Fibre Reach
In areas where fibre connections are not available (e.g. rural areas), the main contenders appear to be:
- wireless, e.g. microwave, cellphone towers, WiMax etc.),
- Low Earth Orbiting Satellites (LEOS) for example Google signed up with Liberty Global and HSBC in a bid to launch 16 LEOS satellites, to bring high-speed internet access to Africa by end 2010,
- and weather balloons, also see here for some dicsussion of the attractivenss of this technology.