Bharti Airtel Africa and BCS with support from Facebook will undertake a fiber project in North Western Uganda.

The fiber ring of 770km, when completed later this year, will help improve connectivity to more than 3M people in 15 towns in North Western Uganda by increasing backhaul capacity. This will also help improve performance and support upgrades to the 3G and 4G services.

“Airtel is constantly looking to improve the customer experience for our subscribers wherever they might be. The fiber ring will increase capacity on the backhaul which will enable us to further improve network quality for voice and high speed data services.

In our experience, access to a reliable and robust telecom network helps in changing lives of the communities that we serve. We are confident that this 770km fiber in North Western Uganda will not only lessen the digital divide but also provide opportunities to increase inter country connectivity with South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” said Raghunath Mandava, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Africa.

Commenting on the fiber project, Ibrahima Ba, Head of Middle East & Africa Infrastructure Product Partnerships, Facebook said, “As part of our mission to connect the world, Facebook is always exploring new ways to collaborate with operators.

One of the ways we’re doing this is by applying learnings from scaling our global infrastructure to our work and investments in connectivity, and many operators have told us they need more capacity when it comes to shared backhaul infrastructure. We’re excited to work with Airtel and BCS to tackle this problem and help bring the people of Uganda better access to the internet.”

With this investment, the project is one of its kind in Uganda, bringing together organizations in a co-build model. The aim is to drive robust network coverage and ultimately improve the service experience for mobile users and promote mobile broadband development in Uganda.