The global economic crisis is one of the biggest challenges the world has had to face. Yet despite the tough times, a huge amount of investment is being ploughed into the African telecommunications sector and the fruit is nearly ready for the reaping. The financial crisis was the dominating topic at the full-day ITWeb IT Confidence 2009 conference held at The Campus in Bryanston recently, that saw international IT leaders discuss the major trends that will shape the IT industry in the next few years.

Speaking at the conference, Mike Brierley, CEO of MTN Network Solutions, said this is the year of the telco. On 17 June, SA will be receiving one of the biggest telecommunications investments, high-speed undersea fibre-optic cable infrastructure that is expected to greatly improve bandwidth capacity and lower telecommunications costs. According to him, Seacom’s new undersea cables will introduce cheaper bandwidth tariffs and international bandwidth prices are also expected to drop significantly. Brierley says investments such as this are cushioning the continent from the pain of the global financial crisis.