Two of the fiber optic cables – SEACOM and TEAMS – have now been connected in Mombasa and SEACOM is already being used by some Internet Service Providers.
Unfortunately connecting the cables to Mombasa and Nairobi only removes one of three bottlenecks before high speed Internet is available in remote areas like Lamu.
Bottleneck One removed – Internet connectivity to and from Kenya
Before the cables arrived Kenya relied completely on satellite links for its whole Internet usage. All Internet traffic out of or into Kenya had to go through satellites somehow. This resulted in (extremely) expensive, slow and unreliable Internet connectivity.
Once the second cable (TEAMS) can be used by ISPs the satellite links will be removed. At the moment the satellite links are being used as a backup to the first cable – SEACOM.
Bottleneck Two – Connecting Nairobi and Mombasa to Lamu
The fact that the fiber optic cables are connected to Nairobi and Mombasa unfortunately does not give remote areas like Lamu instant access to the cables. While the cables have been placed in the water ISPs in Kenya have been busy putting down other cables to connect the rest of Kenya. There is however a risk that even a tiny fiber optic cable never reaches a place if it is too remote or has too few potential customers.
Fortunately remote places can be connected in other ways – regular phone stations and cell towers. As ISPs in Kenya are very secretive about everything they do we do not know how far they have reached in their upgrade of these so called base stations in Lamu.
Bottleneck Three – Connecting us
The current Mobile Internet Service Providers (Safaricom, Zain and Orange) in Lamu all use an old technology called EDGE or 2G (as in second generation of mobile internet technology) for the last step from the cell tower to us. In order for the last bottleneck to disappear this technology has to be upgraded to 3G (third generation).
Safaricom has already upgraded most larger towns in Kenya to a 3G technology called UMTS. Orange has upgraded even more of their network to another technology called EVDO – not as quick as UMTS but still a lot quicker than EDGE.
Orange now also offers a technology called ADSL via wired phone lines (landlines) in Lamu. This service differs from the mobile solutions in that a monthly fee is charged but no fee is charged for the amount of data transferred. The service is called Broadband Nyumbani and is offered both as pre-paid and post-paid. To see this on site in Lamu pay a visit to Baitil Aman in Shela or the ViaCom Cyber café close to the fort in Lamu.
The mobile modem sold with the current Safaricom service – Safaricom Live – will also work with their new technology UMTS. The Orange mobile modem sold with their service Internet Everywhere however will not work with their new technology EVDO so if you plan on buying an Orange mobile modem make sure to get the modem that comes with the Internet Everywhere 3G+ service.
Safaricom do not say when they will upgrade the antenna in Lamu to 3G and it is unclear if bottleneck two or three is the problem.
Comments
Orange now has a Holiday “special” on their 3G EV-DO modems for 2000 /= so it’s much cheaper than Safaricom.
Also, the word on the street is that Safaricom, due to its larger subscriber base, is simply much slower in terms of data speeds when compared to Orange. And I think both have an equal allocation bandwith share of the TEAMS fibre optic project…so do the math.
From my personal experience, Safaricom’s fast speeds have come down to a trickle now. Some times you can’t even connect properly to their network. I’ve seen this happen in Lavington and Kilimani which BTW are lucrative 3G locales but Safaricom can’t seem to maintain some form of RELIABILITY.
Out in Rongai-Kitengela on Maasai Lodge Road, my friend was getting about 800 kbps to 1.2 mbps with Safaricom back in April. I’ll have to see if these speeds are still the same. I doubt it.
I just bought one of the Orange EVDO modems. Unfortunately they forgot to give me the SIM card at Orange. Most obscure 3G modem I got so far – ZTEMT :)
Wanted a Huawei E220 but they were out of stock :(
From experience in Lamu (still on EDGE) where Safaricom has too many users the connection logically becomes unreliable. This will however happen to Orange as well once they get their user base growing.
Safaricom is IMHO still the most reliable and quickest mobile ISP in Kenya (at night I can still reach 4Mbps in Mombasa) but they are heavily over priced. In Europe you would normally pay 3,000KES for 10GB on HSDPA.
Orange’s choice to use the older EVDO technology made their investments smaller and they did not have to pay for a real 3G license. EVDO will probably work for a few years without ppl requiring quicker speeds and Orange may even be able to skip 3G and go directly to 4G but HSDPA is a far better technology already reaching 21Mbps in Europe.