Museveni shakes hands with Huawei's Wenwei in Egypt last week

By Vision Reporter

TELEPHONE call rates are set to go down once the ongoing National Backbone Infrastructure and Electronic Government Infrastructure infrastructure has been completed, the parliamentary committee chairperson on ICT, Igeme Nabeta, said last week.

“This is good progress. If we have these cables laid, we shall have prices gone down,” Nabeta said after inspecting the cable network in Jinja and Kampala.

Huawei Technology, a multinational ICT firm, is laying the approximately 2,000km of fibre optic cable project countrywide.

The project being implemented by the ICT ministry will provide high speed data transmission throughout the country.
The committee said it was satisfied with the work. “With this progress so, Huawei should move on to the second phase of the project,” Nabeta said after the MPs had made test telephone calls to State House, Parliament and key government offices using the cable to determine the quality of work.

Meanwhile, President Yoweri Museveni has commended Huawei Technologies for making communication cheaper and more efficient through their broadband and undersea cable.

He said the investment would see the cost of transmission of information and data reduce significantly.

This, the President added, would help promote efficiency in government departments and improve the picture quality of television in Uganda.

The President was last week meeting the vice-president of Huawei Technologies, Xu Wenwei at the Maritim Hotel, Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.

He said the telecommunication sector in Uganda had improved tremendously. He commended Huawei for ensuring that the country provided a fast communication and internet connection service during the CHOGM meeting in 2007.

“The cost of using this technology is cheaper than satellite cable. Because of this reduction, we can do more things including improving the quality of our television services and linking government departments,” Museveni said.

Wenwei hailed Museveni for his support to the project and said his company was willing to boost efficiency and promote economic development through improving the communication industry.

He also pledged to work closely with local communities through partnerships.