The light pipes under our feet

In most corporations, people, communication and knowledge are few clicks away. Clients and service providers no longer have to be on the same location because of the availability of fiber optic. Fiber connections allowed vendors and clients to transmit data and enjoy instantaneous communication from different parts of the world.

Apparently, use of fiber emerged in 1980s, solving a major problem of signal degradation/loss experienced when working with copper to transfer data over networks.  Copper networks needed repeaters to boost their signals after a distance of 100m, approximately 320 feet. For instance it would be 4 - 8 times (copper 1000mbps, fiber 4 – 8gpbs) faster to back up data from a server to a SUN unit with fiber connectivity.

This means with the speed of 4 – 8gpbs, an equivalent of 25000 pictures or 25 hours of video will be backed up faster on a fiber based than copper network.

Now, everyone will agree we need a strand of one “light Pipe” to our houses or offices, I mean who doesn’t love high internet speeds, transmitting gigabytes of files in seconds or perhaps buffering online videos in a flash! If we really have this appetite for fiber then why don’t we fully utilize this capacity of data at our disposal? 

In January 2011, Rwanda completed work on its 2,300 km cable at a cost of $60 million, Korea Telecom laid the fiber. Tanzania is still working on their 10,000 km cable at a cost of approximately $170 million; Burundi on the other hand got a grant of $10.5 million to lay 1300km of cable. Uganda too acquired a Chinese loan of about $102 million to lay 2100 km long of cable.  Compared to the four countries, Kenya’s private sector has been on the fore front of laying fiber in the country, by June 2010, they had laid 5000km of cable; the government is also investing $60 million in a fiber cable of its own.

These five partners have invested in terrestrial fiber optic to build a large interconnected region on the continent. With all these cables do we have enormous data capacity to utilize them or local telecom companies just installed extra strands in metropolitan areas as a concern against future capacity shortages? Or did the private sector especially in Kenya invest too much to prepare for the much anticipated internet explosion which has led to the growth of dark fiber in the country that is not lit (industry jargon for operating).

What happens to the unlit strands! What if they become obsolete before we completely utilize them? Think about the much turbulence of technology, innovation of lasers that will definitely leap beyond the capabilities of already installed fibers. Let’s hope businesses will grow and more fiber capacity will be needed, at that time the unlit fiber will be used to sustain the next wave of growth.