Sierra Leone’s Minister of information and Communication, Mohamed Rahman Swaray, has on Tuesday September 1st 2020 said that, the interests of citizens are at the centre of the unbundling of the National Fibre Optic asset. The Asset comprises the Submarine Cable and the National Terrestrial Backbone which is presently managed by the Sierra Leone Cable Limited (SALCAB), an optical fibre infrastructure company entirely owned by the Government of Sierra Leone.
Minister Swaray told a news conference in Freetown that the proposed reform is driven by government’s desire to increase broadband penetration, create the enabling environment to develop a digitally inclusive society, reduce the cost of access to digital services and ensure efficient management of the asset.
The reforms propose a public private partnership kind of arrangement for the management of the National Fibre Optic asset.
He said that the unbundling of the Fibre Optic asset is part of the government’s overarching policy and institutional reform, informed by Cluster 3.5 of the National Development Plan and the Ministry of Information National Digital Transformation policy.
He disclosed that his Ministry has put a proposal to Cabinet for the unbundling of the National Fibre Optic asset comprising the Submarine Cable and the National Terrestrial Backbone.
The acting Director, Information Communication Technology, Ministry of Information and Commination, Mohammed M. Jalloh, said that since the management of the Submarine Cable in 2012, mobile broadband and internet penetration has been very low with only 30% of SALCAB capacity utilized, while the cost of internet remains high. He added that the sector is also losing money, and said that the strategic objective of the reform process is to increase mobile broadband and internet penetration to 60 % by 2023, reduce mobile data and fixed in wireless internet prices; and increase revenue generation from the sector.
Jalloh furthered that the expected results of the reform includes, but are not limited to the following: substantial increase in broadband internet penetration nationwide over the next three to five years from the current 17 % to about 50 % over the period; substantial improvement in the connectivity infrastructure to support ongoing e-government programmes with a dramatic transformation in government operations from manual paper-based systems to online systems; rationalized market landscape due to informed regulatory guidelines; greater financial sustainability in the operations and management of government fibre optic cable assets, and improve cyber security.
It could be recalled that the Government of Sierra Leone in partnership with the World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and the Chinese EXIM Bank has made significant investment to improve the telecommunication infrastructure through the deployment of a Submarine Cable Landing station for International connectivity and the terrestrial national fibre backbone for domestic and regional interconnections.
Sierra Leone Cable Limited (SALCAB) is an Optical Fibre infrastructure company incorporated as a limited liability company in 2012 which is entirely owned by the Government of Sierra Leone, operating as a wholesale bandwidth and other related value added service provider to the ICT Industry.
By Alusine Sesay
02/09/2020. ISSUE NO: 7890