By Silvia Nyambura
The World Bank in its study ‘Building broadband: Strategies and policies for the developing world’, notes that low and middle-income countries experienced about a 1.38 percentage point increase in GDP for each 10 per cent increase in broadband penetration. The World Bank further explains that the development impact of broadband on emerging economies is greater than for high-income countries.
To this end, Liquid Telecom, an independent data, voice and IP provider in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa has increased the number of Points of Presence (PoPs) for its top performance business-focused internet from 11 in 2013 to 30 and upgraded all its existing PoPs.
In addition, the company has invested Ushs 2 billion in its Ugandan subsidiary Infocom. This is in a bid to extend its pan African fibre cable infrastructure across Kampala’s Central Business District and to multiple rural towns across Uganda, including Mukono, Jinja, Masaka, and Mbarara.
According to the company’s Chief Technical Officer Frank Haerdtle, demand for data services is growing in Uganda owing to the increased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in 2013.
“Fibre represents a completely superior quality of internet in line with the advanced Internet offering from Infocom. Utilizing Africa’s largest cable network to reach rural towns in Uganda and to offer a world class service within Kampala’s CBD is in line with our vision of fuelling the country’s accelerated economic growth,