Teleport at Longonot the first in East Africa

Several satellite receivers are arranged at the bottom of the Rift Valley, a symbol of the early technological accomplishments of the nation.

The picturesque earth station that was the first of its kind in the region became operational in 1970.

A satellite earth station is a specialised terrestrial terminal used to communicate with satellites. The Longonot Earth Station is a telecommunications satellite port, colloquially known as a teleport.

A teleport typically has one or more parabolic antennae that function as a hub connecting to the telecommunications satellite. When the first earth station located south of Mount Longonot was built, it served the entire East African Community.

In 1968, Kenya and her neighbours became members of Intelsat, the global satellite consortium. The membership granted the region the right to set up earth stations to access Intelsat’s communications satellites.

Through the East African Exchange Telecommunications (Extelcoms), Kenya built the first antenna at Longonot.

To commemorate the feat, the East African Postal Services issued a series of stamps. Some featured a silhouette and others a sketch drawing of the single monstrous receiver.

Despite this show of unity, the telecommunications achievement was at odds with the political underpinnings of the regional body. The political union gradually withered, bringing down with it Extelcoms, which was replaced by Kenextel, and ultimately the Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (KP&TC).

At independence, there was a wide belief that economic union and common infrastructure would be reconciled with national sovereignty through a regional body. With time, however, the desire to maintain the East African Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (EAP&TC) as a common going concern came in direct contradiction with the changes in the three countries.

DISTINCT HISTORY

As the bodies collapsed, each country was forced to find its own gateway into the international communications satellites. Uganda and Tanzania set up their own earth stations, although they still made some use of Kenya’s earth stations for several more decades.

Kenya’s international telecommunications services have a distinct history from its regional partners.

At the height of the colonial era, the services were provided by the Cable & Wireless Company. Control passed to Extelcoms, a partnership between the Kenya government and the Cable & Wireless Company, in 1964. This joint venture survived for a decade until KP&TC purchased the 40 per cent owned by Cable & Wireless and renamed the entity Kenextel.

The two bodies — KP&TC and Kenextel — merged in 1982. Until 1997, EAPTC and its successor, KP&TC, maintained a monopoly on international telecommunications to and from Kenya.

The Longonot Earth Station was the only route through which the entire telecoms sector could access the rest of the world.
The earth station is today a modern complex consisting of two stations and several receivers.

The second station, the Longonot II Satellite Earth Station, was completed in 1981. It enabled Kenya to communicate with West Africa, Europe, and America through the Atlantic Ocean Region Satellite. The first antenna had only allowed access to the Indian Ocean satellites.

When KP&TC was broken down into three bodies in 1997, namely, the Communications Commission of Kenya, Telkom Kenya, and Postal Corporation of Kenya, the earth stations fell under Telkom Kenya.

In 2000, the company launched an upgrading programme to modernise it into a digital telecommunications hub. It invested $4.3 million (about Sh374 million at the current rate) in April 2001 to lay a fibre-optic transmission link between the earth station and Nairobi.

The complex is no longer Kenya’s only earth station. There is a third station in Nairobi and a fourth in Kericho. Private telecommunications companies have also erected their own earth stations to gain a competitive edge in the information age.