More than 50 senior executives from France Telecom and their Kenyan Orange counterparts have converged in a major telecommunication conference to chart a way forward for data services.The conference dubbed Sawasafrica 2010 has brought together senior executives involved in telecommunication infrastructure development and wholesale (carrier) business from as far as France, Asia, Middle East and Africa- to adopt a common approach to bridge the digital divide in Africa and deepening penetration of data services for the population.The two-day conference is expected to provide a forum for the executives to share their experiences and draw lessons from their respective markets as they forge a common implementation plan for Sub Sahara Africa.

Delivering the opening keynote address, former Head of State for Mauritius and member of the Orange Africa Forum,  His Excellency Cassam Uteem  pointed out the key challenges to improving data penetration as being accessibility, affordability and the presence of a supportive regulatory environment.

Orange Kenya CEO Mickael Ghossein agreed with him, affirming that Orange had made positive inroads towards unifying its technologies into a single platform. This, he said, would contribute significantly towards giving the firm a grip on its pole position in high speed affordable data.  “We intend to maintain our lead in data by continuously updating our technology and drawing from global best practice to ensure Orange subscribers enjoy consistent, innovative, quality and value added services,” said Ghossein
Ghossein noted that Orange currently has close to 60,000 mobile broadband subscribers and 1 million mobile subscribers and was confident that this number would double with the roll out of the 3G network during the first half of 2011.
Also attending the conference are the President of Umoja Corporation – NEPAD Dr. Benny Otim and Alexandre Pébereau, Executive Vice President of International Carriers at Orange.
Orange in Kenya currently operates two terrestrial cables, and has substantial shareholding in the TEAMS and EASSy undersea fibre optic cables. The integrated communications services provider is also set to have additional capacity with the anticipated landing of the LION II cable next year.
The company’s already connected the greater East African region and Kenya’s neighbours in the North with a capacity of over 6,000 kilometres of cable, through the National Optic Fibre Backbone Initiative (NOFBI) and Telkom Kenya’s own fibre cable.
The carrier-to-carrier service operated by Orange in Kenya is also used by other telecommunication services providers and corporate institutions with multinational presence to support seamless and reliable communication services.
Globally, Orange has more than 130,000 kilometres of fibre optic cable, connecting more than 200 ISP’s and carriers. It serves more than 13.3 million broadband internet million customers.