Global Networking

Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited (TTCL) is the oldest and largest fixed line telecommunications company in Tanzania. Chief Executive Officer, Mr Said Amir Said, talks to Eric Payne about the company’s plans to expand its network, with a particular focus on broadband internet and data services.

Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited (TTCL) is a descendant of Tanzania Posts and Telecommunications Corporation, a former Tanzanian Government-owned company established in the 1940s. The history of TTCL itself dates back to January 1st 1994, when Tanzania Post and Telecommunications Corporation was split into three separate organisations – Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited, Tanzania Postal Corporation and Tanzania Telecommunications Commission Regulatory Authority.

The first major initiative undertaken by TTCL following the company’s restructuring involved automating all of its existing switches, which, at the time, were still analogue and manually operated. Tanzania’s Telecommunications Restructuring Programme, as it was know, was funded by a World Bank loan of around US$200 million, through which the country’s entire core network was automated and digitised, in order to make it capable of matching future demand requirements.

Strategic partnerships

In many ways, telecommunications is the inverse of a stand-alone business; it is a business of mutual participation wherein collaboration is vital. To this end, TTCL is a member of the International Telecommunications Union, the Southern African Telecommunications Authority (SATA) and one of 45 African telecommunications operators that own equity in the Regional African Satellite Communication Organisation (RASCOM). RASCOM is 63 percent-owned by the Libyan African Investment Portfolio, 25 percent-owned by the 45 African telecommunications providers, and 12 percent-owned by Thales Alenia Space, which also designed and built the organisation’s satellite system.

Elaborating on each of these relationships in turn, Mr Said tells us: “Tanzania is part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the aim of which is to increased socio-economic co-operation and integration among its 15 Southern African signatories. SATA is the telecommunications subset of SADC, which mandates that we facilitate good telecommunications between member states so as to encourage economic growth. For the time being, this takes the form of special tariffs and rates of transfer between different territories so as to encourage the development of telecommunications and, of course, the economy in Southern Africa.”

By the same token, RASCOM is focused on developing satellite communications services for use in rural Africa. “Infrastructure in Africa is still underdeveloped, populations are scattered and big groups of African people live in rural, remote and small family holdings. Moreover, some are still nomadic, making it difficult for companies such as TTCL to offer services to that provide them with a connection to the rest of the world. It was deemed that rolling out the standard telecommunications backbone would be too costly and would take too long to reach these people, so the African Union decided to form RASCOM, in order to address this very issue.”

In 2007, RASCOM launched RASCOM-QAF1, Africa’s first ever communications satellite, into geostationary earth orbit (GEO). Regrettably, soon after its launch that vessel developed a helium link, which it is expected will significantly limit its operations lifetime. Unperturbed, in August 2010, the organisation launched its second satellite, RASCOM-QAF1R, fitted with 12 Ku-band and eight C-band transponders to support rural African community development. Tanzania itself has a population of around 45 million people, of which it is estimated that more than 60 percent live in rural areas, all of which will be able to benefit from this satellite link. Plus, a substantial portion of the country’s economy is based around mining, farming and livestock management. This satellite has been designed exclusively for African use and is much cheaper than any of its present-day alternatives, including INTELSAT, and is capable of accommodating voice, data and internet services. This is something that is still in the early stages of its development, but Mr Said is confident that demand will for its services will grow significantly in the years ahead.

Connection to the world

TTCL itself is a a 50:50 joint venture partnership between the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania and Bharti Airtel (which bought its stake from Celtel Tanzania) as part of a shareholding arrangement. Indeed, yet another aspect of TTCL’s collaborative nature are its relationships with domestic and international operators. “We frequently exchange and terminate traffic with partners and customers, both within Tanzania and internationally,” Mr Said informs us. “The Tanzanian economy is growing very rapidly and the government has been investing in the national ICT backbone in order to bring the country up to speed, which, in turn, has encouraged the growth of broadband services. In 1994, when we started to upgrade the national telecommunications infrastructure, teledensity was just 7 percent; now, roughly 45 percent of people have access to telecommunications services.

“Primarily, we provide voice, data and broadband services, and, of course, different users have different packages to suit their different demands. With domestic customers, it is still mainly voice; SMEs tend to demand internet and broadband; and banks need data transformation. So, demand varies depending upon the specialisation of the end user and we provide tailored packages to meet the needs of all of these market segments. But we do not give any segment preferential treatment. Telecommunications is about serving the community, and different communities have different demands.”

As the licensee for basic fixed-line telephone services in Tanzania, TTCL owns and operates the public switched telephone network in mainland Tanzania and on Zanzibar, and therefore enjoyed monopoly status in Tanzania until 1994, when mobile operators started to establish bases in the country. “The mobile sector is growing rapidly, but competition is very stiff,” Mr Said explains. “I currently compete with local and international providers including Vodacom, ZANTEL, Celtel, Benson, Zain and Bharti Airtel – and there are more coming in all of the time. Indeed, building up a mobile network itself requires a lot of investment. Tanzania is a huge country, so, providing necessary coverage needs cell sites, which, in turn, require power, but this country has no power and no access roads to send technicians. As such, we cover just the core locations. But, still, it is very expensive to run mobile operations in this country.”

In the internet space, the situation is quite different. TTCL controls the country’s core network – switches, IP switches, NGN (next-generation network) equipment, and also controls servers, microwave links, fibre-optic transmission devices and the access network. “All of the operators I have mentioned are trying to do what they can with relations to the internet,” he attests, “but the quality is not the same. TTCL delivers internet through optical fibre and CDMA (code division multiple access), whereas our competitors use GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), which is much slower at delivering internet services. We are also leading the way in terms of the implementation of LTE (long-term evolution), which is the latest mobile network technology leading the way to 4G mobile communications technology.”

The majority of the work on TTCL’s network at the moment involves transforming it into an ITC-based system, so as to cope with increased demand for data and broadband services. “ITC is an excellent way to promote education, health and commerce, so the government has taken a long-term loan of US$200 million from our friends, the Chinese, to upgrade our fibre-optic broadband network, extending it into neighbouring landlocked countries – Rwanda, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, as well as other countries such as Mozambique and Kenya – a major achievement in this part of the world. Fibre-optic technology is something that we have had in this country for quite a long time because of our junction network, however, the Chinese were able to come in and work with us to update our knowledge of the latest generation of long fibres. Indeed, Tanzania is one of the best-supported locations for broadband internet access in East Africa, with connections to the global network through both SEACOM and EASSy – undersea fibre-optic cables that enable us to go international.” Indeed, demand for internet services in Tanzania and the surrounding area has been growing so rapidly that EASSy, which started offering commercial services in July 2010, announced in December 2010 that the EASSy system will be upgraded in 2011, more than doubling the current available capacity on the system.

Closing the ‘digital divide’

As a result of its extensive investment in network infrastructure over the years, TTCL is already capable of accommodating market demands for increased mobile, data and internet services. Whereas, previously, TTCL focussed almost exclusively on the provision of voice services, now it offers a wide range of options to its customers. “Telecommunications has changed for all time and we see a very bright future as a result,” Mr Said affirms. “Very few people will talk on a telephone for longer than two hours at a time, whereas people frequently download content onto their computers for 10 hours at a time, such is the quality and value of what is available on the internet through broadband access.”

This is a paradigm shift that has the potential to have a transformative effect on Tanzanian society. Indeed, as far as Mr Said is concerned, information and communication technologies should not be considered as an adjunct to an industrialised society. In his view, ICT can be a crucial enabler of social, economic and political change. “People are increasingly engaged in activities that have a tangible productive outcome: electronic access to education, health and commerce, for example. This, in turn, has opened room for universities in Tanzania – and there are quite a lot of people going to these universities who will have a different culture and approach to technology than previous generations. These people will depend upon the network for their daily jobs and the future households will most likely have multiple computers – one for the husband, one for the wife, and one each for your two children, all downloading – all of which generates revenue for the telecommunications companies.

“There are a lot of opportunities for the development of telecommunications in Africa, and we need to work together, as members of the international community, in order to make sure that those opportunities are realised,” he continues. “To date, people in this part of the world have been denied access to communications technology, hence, in my view, they should now be being given privileged access in order to bring them up to speed. People in Africa are working like angels, just to keep bread on the table, and cannot afford to pay for the access devices, such as PCs and handsets, which would grant people access to the wider world of telecommunications. Connecting people in Africa with people in the rest of the world would have an immediate impact on their quality of life. But, at the current rate of development, it will be another century before Africa catches up with the rest of the world. We want to move faster, to catch up and close the ‘digital divide’. You and I are privileged to be communicating between continents, and it is the responsibility of people such as us and other industrial stakeholders to lower costs so that others are not left behind. If we can close this gap, then we will live with our doors open and walk on the beaches as before. But if this gap remains, or widens, we will always have problems. We are the people who make people enjoy life, by making the world a ‘smaller’ and more convenient place.”