Moving Botswana into the Digital Era with 100mb/s internet speed : BoFinet

“Imagine having internet speeds of up to 100 Megabits Per second directly to your home. The ability to download an entire music album in 3.5 seconds, a full HD movie in less than 5 minutes, load a web page in 0.1 seconds. Ladies and gentlemen all of this will be possible through the BoFinet Fibre to the Home Infrastructure.” These were the words of epiphany from MR Mooketsi Ratsela, the BoFinet Board Chairman at the Fibre to Home Technology Launch. Mr Ratsela said The next step of this impeccable growth process is to deploy Fibre to the Home (FTTH) targeting 11 898 plots and 16 393 households in Gaborone. 67 plots in Extension 11 have been identified for the pilot, which will be followed by the completion of phase 1 comprising of Extension 3, 9, 5, and 39 scheduled to be complete by November 2019.

BoFinet was mandated by the Government of Botswana to operate a national and international world class telecommunications backbone network infrastructure which will drive connectivity and economic growth. Honorable Dorcas Kobela Makgato, the Minister of Transport and Communications was also in attendance and gave the keynote address. In her address she went on to explain the second part of the rollout. The Fibre to the Home (FTTH) is set to be rolled out to about 16,000 un-serviced medium and high-cost residential plots that should be concluded by December 2020. Once completed this project will avail broadband fibre infrastructure at the doorstep of your premises, and once connected through an ISP or service provider of
choice, will usher in a total new internet experience at home for our customers. The Ministry will issue tenders for FTTB for Jwaneng and Orapa in this current financial year and deliver the connections well during the 2020/2021 financial year. “The project will bring in transformation in the way we communicate and the internet speed at home will be greatly enhanced and improved.” she said.

Eleven citizen owned companies will benefit from this engagement by carrying out all the civil and cable works as well as customer installations and maintenance. The project offers the likes of BTCL, Mascom, Orange and other established ISPs an opportunity to migrate their customers from the weather-prone wireless solutions to the more scalable, stable and fast fibre technology. BoFinet has initiated deployment of IPTV and Video On Demand(VoD) infrastructure and a purpose built open-access Data Centre to deliver two key infrastructure components for the economy that help complete the critical ICT infrastructure value chain

In her closing remarks she said, “To all those contractors who are part of delivering this project, let me urge you to work hard within your agreed timelines and budget not only to achieve successful completion but also to prove that indeed as Batswana companies can compete with the best of the best in delivering projects of such magnitude.”