Telecom infrastructure and service providers in Africa are faced with unique, regional challenges. Unlike their more developed counterparts, East Africa and West Africa have numerous socioeconomic and geopolitical barriers that have undoubtedly affected the adoption of communication services.

Several months ago, East Africa had no cable capacity. While IP capacity and connectivity has since grown tremendously via the SEACOM build out, a 17,000 km cable system supporting 1.28 Tbps of capacity, the challenge of distributing the capacity, from the cable landing station to end-users, specifically those located outside of major cities, has emerged.

Along those lines, Africa is geographically distant from the rest of the world; therefore, making the cost to deploy capacity more expensive than North America or Europe for example.

Regulatory issues and government influence/control over the telecommunication market, also pose a challenge on the continent. In Kenya, for example, while the government is promoting connectivity and supporting the use of the Internet, efforts to make these services affordable and available to the masses have had little success.

Despite the global economic downturn, Africa remains one of the fastest growing telecommunications markets. As an emerging economy, Africa is increasingly becoming the focus of investors who see a huge potential in this market.

Africa has the fastest growing telecommunications industry. But what is driving this growth? A primary driver is undersea cable build outs.

When it comes to cost, cable capacity is significantly cheaper than satellite. This regional growth is also fueled by the demand for high-speed, low latency connectivity. While satellite connections have an average of 600 millisecond delay, cable capacity delivers voice and data communications in less than half the time.

The inherent negative aspects of satellite communications fueled the launch of the SEACOM cable system, the first undersea submarine cable system that connects the African continent to Europe, Asia and India. Through this build out, Tata Communications is able to cost-effectively and efficiently provide fully integrated network services from South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya to its networks in Europe, Asia and India.

The abundance of capacity leads to the creation of a whole new industry for high-speed connectivity from call centers to growing the Internet. To that end, from August 2009 to now, Tata Communications has doubled the entire IP connectivity in Kenya, going from #3 in terms of connectivity to the #1 position.

Parts of Africa already have many attractive elements in place, including an underemployed workforce, good language skills, low labor costs and good time zone locations with European- and Middle Eastern-based companies, which could be harnessed through the proliferation of more connectivity to the rest of the world to support Call Centre, software development, and other similar services.