BULAWAYO mayor David Coltart has said they are ready to avail land to American internet company, Starlink, to construct a ground station.
Coltart posted on his X (formerly Twitter) handle, which he tagged the Starlink owner Elon Musk, revealing that Bulawayo, located in the southern part of the country, is geographically suitable for such a station.
In an interview, Coltart said his post was inspired by the ground station that was established by the American company in Nigeria, adding that a similar station in the Sadc region would improve bandwidth and internet connectivity.
“As a city, we have land to avail, but of course, it would not be a gift, but we would be glad to facilitate such services from Space X within the city,” he said.
“In terms of location, it is an excellent location with the Sadc region considering that Bulawayo is close to South Africa, Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana and Namibia.”
The original post was from high speed internet consultant and researcher Willard Shoko, who mentioned the benefits of a similar ground station within the Sadc region.
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“A closer ground station in the Sadc region will significantly reduce latency and bring investment opportunities and economic development,” Coltart wrote.
Shoko, in a separate post, said Zimbabwe had a lot of unused bandwidth and that setting up a ground station in Bulawayo would make use of the underutilised international bandwidth of which we are only using 36% to download and less than 10% to upload.
“More than 90% of our internet is served in Johannesburg, where local internet service providers peer for free to content delivery networks and hyperscalers like Tiktok, WhatsApp, Meta, Netflix, YouTube, Google etc,” he said.