MTL fibre-optic project near completion
23 Jul 2009
Malawi Telecommunications Limited (MTL), the country's only fixed-line operator, has announced that its US$55m fibre-optic cable project is near completion. The company revealed at a press briefing in Blantyre on Tuesday, 21 July 2009 that the project is going to connect Malawi to the international superhighway.
“The connectivity ranges from a bandwidth capacity of 2.5 - 10 gigabytes per second across Malawi,” explained MTL CEO Peter Zimmer.
The company's ICT specialist Marshall Mdeza said the project will help Malawi achieve phenomenal communication speed since the new connectivity will be transmitting voice, data and video at 100mb to 1gig per second.
“Another advantage over the current system which uses satellite is that it uses pulses of light instead of electric voltages to transmit data, making it immune from electrical interference and wiretapping,” he said.
MTL's chief commercial officer Elias Imaan disclosed that by September this year, the optic fibre network would have connected to Beira in Maputo and South Africa.
About Gregory Gondwe
Gregory Gondwe is a Malawian journalist who started writing in 1993. He is also a media consultant assisting several international journalists pursuing assignments in Malawi. He holds a Diploma and an Intermediate Certificate in Journalism among other media-related certificates. He can be contacted on moc.liamg@ewdnogyrogerg. Follow him on Twitter at @Kalipochi.
