AccessKenya today announced that its breaking ground for its own fibre optic infrastructure in Mombasa as part of its ongoing plans to build what will be one of the largest IP based fibre networks in Kenya.

“We are delighted to announce that we are starting work on our Mombasa metro fibre network which will cover a large number of the biggest buildings in Mombasa. The network will initially be laid around parts of Mombasa island and will use full ring topology so as to ensure uptime which will allow us to deliver exceptional broadband speeds and 100% redundancy to our corporate  and residential customers” said Mr Jonathan Somen, AccessKenya Group’s Managing  Director. Mr Somen also said that their offices in Mombasa at TSS Building will be connected to both the SEACOM and TEAMS high speed undersea cables before the network is rolled out to other buildings.

AccessKenya have chosen Enterprise Génèrale Malta Forrest (EGMF), a well established contractor and engineering company to manage the digging and laying of the physical infrastructure of the Mombasa metro fibre network. EGMF have been involved in many other fibre networks both in metropolitan areas as well as nationally around Kenya including AccessKenya’s Nairobi metro fibre network,

“The massive explosion of IP based services has helped us decide that deploying an IP fibre network will ensure we deploy the technology of choice for the future. Having an IP based network will allow us to offer more capacity at the most attractive prices whilst keeping very tight control on the quality of service and reliability of the network, as well as having more flexibility in offering value added services and other features on our network” continued Somen.

AccessKenya already have 140km of metro fibre network covering over 250 buildings in Nairobi. In addition, AccessKenya has one of the largest WIMAX networks in Kenya, as well as a long established Motorola Canopy wireless network that has approximately 3,000 square kilometers of coverage. The additional metro fibre will give the AccessKenya Group the ability to offer significantly higher speeds to its 6,500 customers from its 5,000 megabits of international fibre.