Ghana this week celebrated the completion of a 775km fibre-optic infrastructure project
Designed and implemented by Alcatel-Lucent, in collaboration with Ghana’s National Information Technology Agency (NITA), the fibre-optic ‘backbone’ was built to link the country’s north and south, connecting to international submarine gateways via its eastern corridor.
“The new eastern corridor optical backbone network will offer a great number of direct socio-economic benefits for the communities within the catchment areas of this project,” said NITA’s director general,William Tevie. “It will, for example, attract new business, offer teaching and learning opportunities as well as telemedicine and new e-health services.”
The network will also improve communications links for central and regional administration offices in support of the national ‘e-Ghana’ initiative, serving major towns such as Nkwanta, Bimbila and Jasikan, as well as a number of smaller rural communities.
The contract for the project, which was funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), was awarded to Alcatel-Lucent in 2012. The company used agile optical networking based on the 1830 Photonic Service Switch with 100G technology as the network’s basis.
