CAIRO: As Internet outages continue to hit East Africa, Rwanda has moved to assist more users to be able to connect online by making it mandatory for telecommunications operators and ISPs to “provide seamless redundancy and diversity of Internet bandwidth to guarantee service.” The move is likely to benefit users who have suffered over the past three weeks since the underwater cable was clipped, causing blackouts of service across the region. “This will allow automatic sharing of bandwidth between operators at pre-negotiated prices to avoid service interruptions in case of any breakdown,” the government said in a statement published on Monday. “The Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) will institute a settlement system in the next few days to allow inter-operator bandwidth backup and seamless routing once any operator's available bandwidth reduces to a predetermined threshold,” it added. The move comes as telecom operators have struggled to deliver services to their customers since the February 17 cut of the EASSY cable between Djibouti and Port Sudan, which cut some 80 percent of traffic. Sources in Kenya say that it could take up to three more weeks until services are returned to normal in the region. Rwanda and Zimbabwe have been hit hardest, while in Kenya and Uganda, other cables have supported current traffic, albeit at slower speeds. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/GJ5yD Tags: Internet, Outage, Rwanda, Sharing Section: Business, East Africa, Latest News, Tech
