Social unrest in eastern Zaire hasn’t interrupted the independent cellular network of Telecel International Ltd., which operates an analog system countrywide there.
“There has been a temporary surge of activity, in part, because the aid organizers use a lot of cell time,” said Justin Dudley, Telecel’s vice president of engineering and research development.
People fleeing trouble in bordering Rwanda have sought shelter in eastern Zaire for the last two years. A power struggle between two ethnic tribal groups in Rwanda has troubled that nation and, consequently, bordering countries for decades.
International aid workers have been on the scene to prevent health epidemics like the Ebola virus outbreak that killed about 200 Rwandan refugees last year. Rwandans began returning to their homes last week.
Zaire’s landline network was built by the Belgians 50 or 60 years ago when Zaire was a European colony and the area was known as the Belgian Congo.
Zaire is rich in gold, copper and diamonds, and covers about 900,000 square miles with a population of 44 million. In the center of the country is a low-lying region covered by rain forest, impassable, without roadways or infrastructure.
Unlike developed nations, where most cellular calls begin with a cellular handset but terminate on a landline phone, traffic in Zaire is primarily cellular to cellular, Dudley said.
Zaire’s local telephone system has not been maintained properly since the Europeans departed in the early 1960s. Thus, cellular calls are only routed through the landline system in two cities where the local system is acceptable: the capital city of Kinshasa in western Zaire, and the second largest city of Lubumbashi in the south.
Some of the old telephone system is used in the diamond area of Mbuji-Mayi, but the eastern cities of Guma and Bukavu are pure cellular plays.
Calls travel from the cell site to the mobile telephone switching office, then back to the appropriate cell site and to the mobile recipient. Calls are passed across the country, city to city, via satellite.
Telecel’s networks are operated by local Zairians. Cellular customers are primarily the 1 percent of the population that holds the wealth, such as diamond traders, embassy leaders or petroleum magnates.
With Rwandans returning to their homes, Zaire may stabilize or erupt, depending on the future health of Zaire’s President Mobutu and the activities of guerrilla factions throughout the area.
“If it becomes a bloody civil war, we will continue to run the cellular networks because they will be the singular link there,” Dudley said.
Telecel has headquarters in New Canaan, Conn. It first offered cellular service in Africa a decade ago, and only now is seeing competitors begin operations, the company said.
