Telcos co-share ducts to lay fibre cables.

It has been a common practice to find each telecom company digging ducts all over the country to lay fibre optic cables. But there is a new trend to that practice in this report by Charles Benoni Okine.

Telecom companies in the country have now accepted to co-share ducts to enable them to lay fibre optic cables across the country.

The move, a better departure from the norm where each telco dug its own trench to lay the cables, is intended to save the environment, drastically cut cost of laying the cables and reduces the theft on the cables.

Already, the telcos are also co-sharing the use of their towers to mount cell sites.

The acting Chief Operating Officer of tiGO, Mr Larry Arthur, mentioned this at the second Knowledge Forum under the auspices of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications on the theme; “Cable cuts; How they hurt subscribers and the telecoms industry”.

He said the companies also took into consideration the damage the digging of ducts cause to roads and properties of residents among others and expressed the hope that with these measures, there will be savings made to bring harmony.

However, he said in spite of the efforts put in place by the telcos to reduce the inconveniences, “we suffer a lot from cable cuts either through theft or by contractors undertaking road projects in various parts of the country.

Mr Arthur said much as the cable lanes have been clearly marked to fore-warn contractors, some of them do not heed to signs and tend to dig deep to destroy the cables.

Fibre optic cables.

This is a technology that uses glass (or plastic) threads (fibers) to transmit data. A fiber optic cable consists of a bundle of glass threads, each of which is capable of transmitting messages modulated onto light waves.

Fiber optics has several advantages over traditional metal communications lines:

  Fiber optic cables have a much greater bandwidth than metal cables. This means that they can carry more data.

Fiber optic cables are less susceptible than metal cables to interference.

  Fiber optic cables are much thinner and lighter than metal wires.

Data can be transmitted digitally (the natural form for computer data) rather than analogically. The main disadvantage of fiber optics is that the cables are expensive to install. In addition, they are more fragile than wire and are difficult to splice. Fiber optics is a particularly popular technology for local-area networks. In addition, telephone companies are steadily replacing traditional telephone lines with fiber optic cables. In the future, almost all communications will employ fiber optics.

Fibre across the continent

The Mail One on March 1, 2012 reported that a ship's anchor accidentally sliced an underwater internet cable, cutting off access to six African countries.

The incident happened as the vessel stopped in the wrong area as it waited to enter a port in Mombasa, Kenya.

The ship was dragging its anchor when it broke the 3,000 mile long fibre-optic cable on Saturday. It took engineers three weeks to repair.

Sott.net also reported March 3, 2012 that a series of bizarre coincidences had left several African countries experiencing significantly reduced Internet traffic.

The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS) cable pipes Internet and telecommunications from its landing points in Fujairah in the UAE to Mombasa, Kenya. A ship had apparently "dropped anchor in a restricted area.

The three cables in question were the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), the Europe India Gateway (EIG) and the South East Asia Middle East Western Europe-3 (SEA-ME-WE-3).

In Ghana, most of the cuts are not offshore but onshore and mostly because of road construction and other heavy landed projects across the country.

A Director at the Ministry of Communications, Mr Issah Yahya acknowledged the challenges the telcos face as a result of the numerous fibre cuts.

Consequently he called on the public to help protect such infrastructure because “the fibre cables help them to run an effective and efficient internet and data services which we all depend on”.