Fixed line operator Telkom Kenya plans to replace all its copper cables with fibre in a bid to curb rising vandalism and cuts that are costing the company over $6 million per year in losses.
The company, which enjoys a monopoly of operating fixed lines in Kenya, plans to spend about $50 million in the exercise.
Telkom Kenya-Orange's product manager in charge of corporate marketing Felix Aron said that the transformation is intended to start with Upper Hill area near the capital city, as the infrastructure in the area has suffered from frequent copper cable cuts.
"In the Upper Hill area, this has been compounded by a road construction that commenced without proper prior notice and we acknowledge the fact that the ongoing road construction has greatly affected businesses both large and small in this area. It is for that reason that we decided to accelerate the transformation programme in this area," he explained.
"A cable cut incident in this location leads to network downtime that affects a significant number of Telkom Kenya-Orange clients," he added.
The decision to upgrade to fibre is seen as a move to also cut costs.
"The copper infrastructure has various key challenges including the fact that there are several pairs of copper cable, thus complex to restore during faults and also complex to create redundancy. A fibre network on the other hand is more ideal in that it needs shorter time to restore and has redundancy factored in the last mile," he added.
Some buildings in the target area have already had their copper infrastructure replaced with cable while others will be covered by March 2013 before the programme can be rolled out to the rest of the country.
"Infrastructure transformation of the Milimani and Upper Hill area is almost complete. Telkom Kenya-Orange is deploying the next generation switches expected to cover the entire country in phases," Aron said.
He added that the process is meant to support the entire market chain - small to medium size enterprises, large corporates as well as public sector organisations - to cope with their ICT needs.
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