Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited (TTCL) is planning to take advantage of Tanzania broadband flexibility by providing internet broadband to other country in its region.

In doing this, TTCL will explore new markets in the East and Central African region.

As part of its business plan, TTCL plans to distribute broadband  internet  services to neighbouring countries in Burundi, Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia.

According to TTCL Marketing Manager, Nicodemus Mngutu, the company plans to utilise the country’s network availability and reliability of 99.8  percent as compared to other countries which is below 70 percent.

In an interview with BusinessStandard, Mngutu said: “Now that the NICTBB has reached all border points of the country …we are eyeing more markets of the inland countries which can take advantage of our complete network.”

He explained that “As land-locked countries, they (the company) face significant challenges in getting access to low cost international connectivity. This purchase of bulk international capacity on regional and international networks will significantly boost our vision to make bandwidth available to such markets.”

Mngutu posited that if broadband becomes a commodity on the inland markets, it would stimulate deployment of a wider and improved range of services to consumers at affordable prices.

The company is already in contract with Rwanda to supply 1.244 gigabytes of internet bandwidth to the country for 10 years.

As part of the contract with Rwanda, TTCL is expected to install, configure, test, commission and activate a temporary link with 155 megabytes bandwidth per second.

Mngutu however revealed that apart from Rwanda; Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Kenya and Uganda have also expressed their interest in Tanzania supplier of bandwidth.

Meanwhile, National ICT Broadband Backbone (NICTBB) Technical Coordinator, Eng Anita Chingumbe revealed that Mozambique is the next country to take advantage of the opportunity presented by Tanzania.

She said the company is through with the feasibility study at border post with Mozambique, adding that Tanzania is safer because it has rings through regions and districts which makes it resilient even if one line were to be cut off.

She also attested to Mngutu statement that the Tanzania’s network has guaranteed an availability and reliability of 99.8 percent as compared to the region which is below 70 percent.

“This technology is not only resilient to bad weather, including rain, but it possesses better characteristics such as high bandwidth capacity, compactness, low transmission losses, high signal security, immunity to interference and system reliability,” she said.

Available report shows that there has been an increase of mobile phone users in the country, from less than 100,000 in the late 1990s to about 20 million in December 2010.This translates to around 50 per cent tele-density.

The telecommunication growth has also contributed to about 25 percent to the national GDP in the 2009/2010 financial year.