In the Province of Cabinda, an enclaved Angolan territory disconnected from the mainland by the Zaire River and a strip of land of Democratic Republic of Congo, the geographic location has always been a constraint to closer relations with the rest of the country - whether it affects people’s mobility or the circulation of goods and their prices.

The non-existence of a submarine telecommunications cable has made Cabinda depend on satellite, for many years, to connect to the rest of the country – but that was before PRIT. In fact, in the words of the Director of Angola Telecom in Cabinda, Tomás Lelo, "PRIT really was one of the projects that was designed to solve the problem of our connection between Cabinda and Luanda, because as you know, Cabinda has the problem of geographical discontinuity from the rest of the Angolan territory. Thus, microwave technology was our only way to connect. With the installation of PRIT, it is a fact that we have taken a very big step in our communications, which have become more stable, and we have gained a very large response capacity.”

Highlighting the economic profile of the area, Tomás Lelo stresses that “the fact that Cabinda is an oil producer province, where many oil companies operate, makes communications essential for the development of this province. Up to 60% of our customers are oil companies, which without communications, practically can’t work.”

His colleague from the Technical Department, Nicolau da Silva, recalls that "during the installation of the microwave links from Luanda to Cabinda, PRIT had a major social impact on telecommunications, because it increased the bandwidth, which at the time was very small." Customers had an upgrade from about 100Kb/s to 2MB in data usage in the case of private clients. Companies also started to have more bandwidth. We went on to provide up to 155Mb dedicated to each customer, which undoubtedly revolutionized the use of IT at the provincial level.”

For Tomás Lelo, “the truth is that this project was welcome and continues being so, because until today, we continue to depend on it for our connection with Luanda. We just have to thank New Cognito, because all that Angola Telecom is today, it’s thanks to PRIT, thanks to this project."

Pictures credits: Ver Angola and Wikipedia