Cameroon to be connected by submarine cable to Brazil

Arriving Tuesday in Yaoundé, Lu Yimin, President and CEO of China Unicom, will sign on Wednesday the Protocol relating to the construction of an underwater cable line between the two countries.

China Unicom is a Chinese telecommunications operator specialized in mobile telephony is visiting Cameroon.

The company proposes to construct an underwater fibre optic cable between Cameroon and Brazil and extend the National Broadband Network (NBN) of Camtel, telecommunications infrastructure for broadband. The operation, which will run over 24 months, should improve capacity and national coverage of Camtel networks and other telephony operators.

To do this, he is expected today to have discussions with the Minister of posts and Telecommunications (Minpostel), the Director general of Camtel and Huawei and shall proceed to the signing of the related Protocol.

In practice, the project will involve the construction of a link of 5917 km of submarine cable between Cameroon and Brazil, the extension of 208 000 wired lines for subscribers of the fixed network, the supply and installation of sources of energy including 50 solar stations, among others.

The goal is to increase the security and reliability of Camtel networks. According to forecasts, the extension of infrastructure broadband (NBN) for Camtel is expected to provide broadband to households and businesses throughout the national territory.

It will also secure the Camtel network so that it can support large capacity of data transfer, optimize its CTPhone network to ensure the availability of means of telecommunications throughout the major projects sites and in non open localities.

In General, the project aims to improve the performance and innovations of Camtel services by increasing their capacities and levels of coverage, the provision of broadband services, facilitation of e-governance as well as the popularization of Internet access.

For the time being, funding for this project of more than 218 billion is under negotiation with China Eximbank that should take care of 85% project costs and the State of Cameroon, 15%. Cameroon currently has several submarine cable landing points, which the operation was entrusted to Camtel, secular arm of the State sector.

These are submarine cable from the WASC consortium in Douala through Batoke-Limbe landing point, the point of siltation of Kribi linking Nigeria to Cameroon and the point of landing of the submarine cable WACS in Limbe in the Cameroonian State recently reconveyed to the State by MTN Cameroon.