Google in competition against Facebook is trying to make Internet connection in developing countries cheaper and reliable. The two companies are doing this by partnering with local stakeholders like mobile network operators (MNOs) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Facebook is achieving this under the Internet.org program while Google is doing it under the Project Link program. The West African nation Ghana has become the latest developing country to benefit from Google’s Project Link. The tech giant company is installing infrastructures like fiber-optic networks and partnering with local ISPs and MNOs to provide Ghanaians cheap and reliable Internet connection.
Google is said will build over 1,200 kilometers of fiber optic cable across the following Ghanaians towns; Accra, Tema and Kumasi that will connect the local ISPs and MNO to a metro-area fiber. This infrastructure will help them meet the demand for speed and high data capacity. Thus, scale up the supply for the growing demand for data across Ghana’s schools, the business community, and individual smartphone users.
If all goes as planned, Google’s Project Link in Ghana will be up and running by early 2016. Works are already underway in Accra and Kumasi is set to follow suit soon.
In a blog post, Google wrote, “There’s a lot of work ahead but we look forward to working with local providers to ensure that Ghana’s local infrastructure can help its people and businesses participate fully on the Web and be inspired by what they can do online.”
Uganda is another beneficiary of the Google’s Project Link project and the Research, and Education Network of Uganda is one institution that a great success story to tell from the project.
The organization provides the framework for connecting universities across Uganda, strengthening their academic collaboration, ideas exchange, build stronger networks and enable remote research.
Many demographic and economic surveys place the African continent among the fastest-growing continents in the world; if not the fastest. However, only a handful of people in African have access to reliable and fast Internet connection.
Internet has been praised for opening up a new ways for doing business and learning among other things. Access to the Internet will go a long way in making the continent live up to its full potential.