The East African Fibre Summit

Nairobi, September 22-23, 2009

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 in 2009. Governments and corporate users in the region need to prepare for the transition from a predominantly satellite-based communications infrastructure to a fibre cable-based communications infrastructure.

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.