Guinea Bissau
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Eguitel
Founded originally in 1995, a war in 1998 destroyed much of their facilities and equipment. Rebuilding began shortly thereafter. Eguitel's facilities include a 2.9 Mbps VSAT terminal, several masts throughout Guinea Bissau, point-to-point links around the capital city, Bissau, using "Wave Wireless" terminals and some Motorola Canopy links.
Eguitel has a 27,000 liter diesel fuel storage facility and a bank of generators which run 24 hours per day to provide electricity, because the public electricity system is virtually never available. These generators consume approximately 5000 liters per month. Eguitel also provides training in variety of skills, including computer repair, networking (including a Cisco certified training center), basic computer skills, and RF networking. They have built their team from scratch, by sending lead technicians to Europe, Brazil and the United States, who come back and provide training to the less advanced technicians.
Terrain
Guinea Bissau is a low lying country, with the mouth of seven different rivers along the western African coast. The terrain is ideally suited for rice farming, and has no sizable hills except in the south east. Part of the country is an archipelago.
The lack of hills means that there are often no major obstructions to line of site, but it also means that finding high points on which to place transmitters is difficult.
Canopy Backbone
Eguitel is implementing a 300Mbps backbone using Motorola canopy, stretching from the east interior to the west-most coastal area.
