The Zambian government has been urged to speed up the implementation of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) policy in order to facilitate the installation of the fibre optic cable that will improve and upgrade the country's Internet connection.

James Matale of the One World Africa, speaking at the stakeholder consultative meeting on the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), said the east African coast is currently the only one without link to the international fibre optic network, a situation that makes the connectivity in the region both costly and less reliable. Matale said though the Zambian government has realised the value of ICT, the development of the ICT policy is however at a very slow pace and this has affected the rate at which private sector ICT projects are implemented. Matale pointed out that the lack of adequate ICT infrastructure to support high quality and high speed Internet connection continues to threaten the capacity of countries to fully exploit the benefits of the cable once installed. He said the proposed cable system provides hope to link eastern and southern Africa to the fiber optic system and has the potential to benefit the people in the region. The EASSy project is an optic undersea cable system which will connect the region with the rest of the world. The 10,000 km EASSy cable would run from port of Sudan to Durban in South Africa at a cost of 200 million U.S. dollars. The cable system is estimated to be ready for service by the end of 2007.

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