The economic capital, Douala, last Monday December 12 became the first city to have an optical fibre ring. The ring that measures over 50 kilometres cost some FCFA 3 billion entirely funded by the Telecommunications Special Fund. It ushers the “First Smart City” in particular and Cameroon in general into a society of information and knowledge.
Presiding at the inauguration ceremony, the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Jean Biyiti bi Essam, said the major accomplishment in the telecommunications sector translates government’s will to stimulate and accelerate economic growth using Information and Communication Technologies, ICTs.
Technically, the Douala optical fibre ring is a major breakthrough into the information superhighway. According to the Director of Planning and Development in the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Raphael Nlend, the optical fibre ring was designed to respond to the needs and exigencies of operators in the telecommunications sector, internet service providers, companies and households. “With the bandwidth moving from two mega bytes per second to 10 gigabytes per second, the current capacity will be multiplied a thousand fold to offer best quality-price equation to companies and households,” he told Cameroon Tribune yesterday December 14.
To telecommunication operators, the new optical fibre ring will provide an opportunity to link up their technical stations by optical fibre and not by satellite as the case had been thereby halting phenomena related to poor network connections. Furthermore, telecommunication operators will move to third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) services comprising wide-area wireless voice telephone, mobile internet access, video calls and mobile television. The optical fibre ring will thus open the way for added value cyber applications such as video-conferencing, video surveillance, e-government, e-commerce, e-banking, e-learning, e-health and a variety of online services that will make life a lot more easier for companies and households.
Douala’s new acquisition is part of government’s plan to equip Cameroon’s big cities with modern high-speed telecommunication networks and metropolitan optical fibre networks called optical fibre rings. Huawei Technologies Co Ltd Group and Avilyos are the two companies carrying out the construction of the optical ring, under the technical supervision of Maas Telecom Corporation, an international consultancy firm. Works on the Yaounde optical fibre ring are expected to start in 2012.
