By Damas Makangale, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
TANZANIA Telecommunications Company Limited
(TTCL) plans to extend its large-capacity internet service dubbed Internet
Protocol Point of Presence (IP-PoP) in East and Southern Africa by offering
speedy and reliable connections in the region..
At the present, the service has been expanded
to mobile phone operators in neighbouring countries of Uganda and Malawi,
according to TTCL's Chief Marketing and Sales Officer, Peter Ngota.
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| TTCL's Chief Marketing and Sales Officer, Peter Ngota. |
He made the remarks on the sidelines of the
two-day Capacity Africa meeting in Dar es Salaam recently. The annual event
brings together fixed-line and mobile wholesale operators from Africa and
beyond.
The IP-PoP service to be operated from Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania, is a brainchild of TTCL through a partnership with Italian
firm, Telecom Italy Sparkle, for the delivery of IP services in South and East
Africa through the IP-PoP.
"It will provide cost effective, high
quality and secure fully protected global IP connectivity solutions to telecom
operators, internet service providers (ISPs) and service providers that are
connected to Dar es Salaam through major international submarine and
terrestrial cable systems,” he explained.
Ngota said the service will also bring
customers closer to content providers by increasing the speed of accessibility
from one point to another.
"It is high time that wholesale customers,
regional operators as well as internet service providers utilized opportunities
provided by IP-PoP to transform their business operations," Ngota urged.
TTCL is also the host and operator of the
National ICT Broadband Backbone which connects Tanzania to the rest of the
world through submarine fibre optic network which is cheaper and reliable as
compared to satellite connections.
All regions in Tanzania have been connected to
the network and plans are afoot to expand it to all districts in the third
phase of the project which is slated to start next year.
The broadband backbone has also been extended
to nine boarder points connecting neighboring countries of Rwanda, Burundi,
Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Speaking at the same occasion, the Director of
Six Telecoms, Rashid Shamte, praised the government for the investments it has
made in the ICT sector.
"We currently run a service dubbed
'metro-network' which operates in Dar es Salaam but through the broadband
backbone we will be able to extend our operations to other regions and boost
the market," Shamte said.
The director said he was also happy that the
Capacity Africa 2014 meeting, which is being attended by over 460 participants,
exhibitors and ICT experts will come up with suitable solutions for improving
the sector in Tanzania and Africa as a whole.
Furthermore, Tanzania Telecommunications
Company Limited (TTCL) is the oldest and largest fixed line telecommunications
company in Tanzania.
The company comes forth from the former
Tanzania Posts and Telecommunications Corporation in 1993. TTCL was wholly
owned by the Government of Tanzania until the partial privatization of the
company on February 23, 2001.
TTCL is governed by statute – the Tanzania
Telecommunications Act of 1993. The company is licensee for fixed basic
telephone services in Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar and hence it owns and
operates the public switched telephone network in mainland Tanzania and on
Zanzibar.
Before the coming of mobile operators in late
1994, the company was enjoying monopoly on Tanzania Mainland and a duopoly on
Tanzania Zanzibar, where Zanzibar Telecoms Limited (Zantel) was the second
licensed fixed basic telephony operator.
The company has been in several joint
managements due to its financial instability. In early 2001, previously as
Zain, at that time Dutch MSI, which has its headquarters in Amsterdam,
Netherlands and Detecon took over Board and Management control of TTCL.
In this partial privatisation the government of
Tanzania sold 35% of its shares to the strategic investors. TTCL pulled out
from joint management with the consortium in August 2005. Again in February
2007 the company fell in management of the Canadian firm Sasktel due to the
same reason.
In February 1999 TTCL was having an exchange
capacity of 192,365 lines and 126,515 connected direct exchange lines (DELs).
The company was having a workforce of under
4,000 as at February 1999. The company's revenues were approximately USD112
million in 1998, its earnings before interest, tax and depreciation were
approximately USD32 million in the same year, and following a major capital
restructuring it had a ‘clean’ balance sheet.
The company has its headquarters and customer
care allocated in Extelecom's Building in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
TTCL also has operational and engineering branches
in all regions in the country. It has been working with Huawei Technologies Co.
Ltd as the infrastructure vendor of the company and Ericsson as a long-term
strategic supplier of the company.
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