According to DataReportal, 14.33 million people in Somalia were not using the Internet at the beginning of 2022. This low penetration rate can be attributed in particular to the insufficient Internet infrastructure in the country, among others.
Vertiv, a British company specializing in the provision of digital infrastructure, has announced that it has built a submarine cable landing station (CLS) for the Somali telecom operator Hormuud Telecom. The new infrastructure should allow the telecom company to introduce new cables to improve Internet access in the country.
“ Hormuud Telecom is planning a significant expansion of the network capacity of several submarine cables for Somalia in the near future ,” says Yasin Hassan, corporate communications manager at Hormuud Telecom.
The landing station is expected to help bridge the internet infrastructure gaps that currently exist in the Somali telecom landscape. The country is currently connected to a few cables including EASSy, WACS, Europe India Gateway (EIG), Djibouti Africa Regional Express 1 (DARE1), Gulf2Africa (G2A). It also houses landing stations to accommodate the 2Africa cables from Meta, Africa-1 and PEACE.
The landing station can accommodate several submarine cables at the same time, we learn. This is expected to accelerate broadband penetration and thereby improve internet connectivity in and around Somalia. According to DataReportal, Somalia had only 2.27 million internet users in January 2022, representing a penetration rate of 13.7%.
“ This cable landing station is monumental for Somalia’s digital growth and for placing it on the global digitalization map. In today’s world, and especially in the post-pandemic world, it is essential that all citizens have access to the Internet and to data ,” said Pierre Havenga, Managing Director of Vertiv in Africa.