Kenya, Tanzania use bandwidth optimization technology

By Rebecca Wanjiku , IDG News Service , 08/21/2008

Companies in Kenya and Tanzania have adopted bandwidth optimization technology to cut interconnectivity costs and improve efficiency in service delivery.

People want to access services from a centralized location, from any branch, said Preston Odera, executive director of K-Ninety East Africa. Large corporations that have several branches are facing high bandwidth costs to deliver services and have turned to WAN (wide area network) acceleration technology, he added.

 WAN acceleration equipment organizes applications' paths, creates room for more software to pass through the pipes, and creates high-end compression and quality of service from the connection.

The equipment allows a company to choose the software that is most important and assign it more bandwidth, while other software is allocated according to priority, Odera explained.

K-Ninety supplies WAN acceleration technology from Jupiter Technologies in the U.S. The models available locally are the WXC250, WXC5W and WXC1800, which allow companies to achieve three to 10 times more than they did on their bandwidth.

Peter Kimani, an IT expert in Nairobi, noted that Kenya and Tanzania can benefit from the technology while waiting for the fiber-optic cable to land in Mombasa, as the cost of satellite bandwidth does not show signs of falling.

"WAN acceleration technology makes it easier for a company to transact," he said. "That is why we can effort to access money from any branch in the bank. Competition is so high, and every company has to look out for latest technology."

While the two countries face similar bandwidth challenges, Odera said Tanzania has been adopted the technology more quickly than its neighbor.

"Tanzania is very vast, and branches are far and wide. When using VSAT (very small aperture terminal) to connect branches in Mwanza, Arusha, Dar es Salaam and Kigoma, it makes a lot of sense to optimize the bandwidth," Odera said.

According to Tanzanian policy expert Peter Mkami, Tanzania has seen seven mobile phone companies adopt the technology, while two have done so in Kenya.

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