COMTEL Project

COMTEL Project is a program of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) aimed at creating a regional telecommunications infrastructure^[1] for the 21 member states via a fiber backbone. This will help member states get rid of satellite links they currently use for their transit traffic between themselves going via Europe, America and Asia.

Implementation

COMESA allegedly entered into an agreement with the Anderberg-Ericsson Consortium of Mauritus as a strategic equity partner;^[2] however, it was subsequently reported that Ericsson would not participate as an equity partner.^[3] On February 26, 2007, it was announced that the COMTEL Project had encountered delays, leading to individual member countries developing their own regional telecommunication infrastructures.^[4]