TTCL Chief Executive Oficer Dr. Kamugisha Kazaura (r) together with MS Huawei Technologies Managing Director, Bruce Zhang.
THE State owned Tanzania Telecomunications Limited TTCL, yesterday inked a 328bn or $182m deal with Huwei technologies aimed at helping the national telcom build its landline and mobile ICT networks.
Speaking at the signing in Dar es salaam yesterday, the TTCL Chief Executive Oficer Dr Kamugisha Kazaura said the first part of the project will complete by June this year.
He noted the projects in the deal involves building of a 4G Long Term Evolution,3G UMTS and 2G GSM, technologies which will help TTCL to expand its services across the entire country at more sophisticated quality.
He pointed out that the technologies would help the company offer higher quality data services. The agreement involves procurement of equipment to take telecommunication services to rural areas under Universal Communications Service Access Fund UCSAF.
UCSAF has been established by Universal Communications Service Access Act, 2006 with the key objective to foster social and economic development in rural and urban areas through ICT intervention. Other Objectives of Fund’s establishment include to ensure the availability of communication services in rural and urban underserved areas.
Dr Kamugisha said TTCL has won the contract to take telecommunications services to 69 wards that make up over 400 villages with over 500,000 people. Under the UCSAF project, TTCL will get $10m to build infrastructure of the project in those wards.
The agreement between Huawei and TTCL is part of the later management efforts to improve services and expand them to more people across the country. In a comprehensive plan that seeks to take advantage of the resilience of Tanzania’s National ICT Broadband Backbone, TTCL has recently won deals to sell more gigabytes of internet bandwidth as a commodity to the neighbouring countries.
It has already closed a $6.7-million, 10-year deal to supply 1.244 gigabytes of internet bandwidth to Rwanda.
This means Tanzania becomes the first country in the region to start selling internet bandwidth to other eac states thanks to the laying of the international submarine fibre-optic cable systems eassy and seacom. The deal was reputed as testimony to the firm’s growing international reputation. The deal is the biggest of its kind in Tanzania, and the region in general.
Under the deal, TTCL is expected to test, install, configure, commission and activate a temporary link with 155 megabytes bandwidth per second by the end of this month. The state-owned telecommunications firm’s chief said the government’s vision to transform the country into an iict hub for africa is now within reach.
UCSAF promotes the participation of the public and private sector in the provision of universal communication services to the rural and urban underserved areas as well as creating a framework for an open and efficient access to and use of communication networks and service in production and availability of competitive market.