Description:
Rural areas of Tanzania are still disadvantaged in
terms of diffusion of IP-based services; this is due to lack of
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructures,
especially lack of connectivity. One of the limitations for
connectivity problems in rural areas of Tanzania is the high cost to
establish infrastructures for IP-based services [1-2]. However the cost
of connectivity varies from one technology to the other and at the
same time, the cost is also different from one operator (service
provider) to another within the country. This paper presents
development of software system to calculate cost of connectivity to
rural areas of Tanzania. The system is developed to make an easy
access of connectivity cost from different technologies and different
operators. The development of the calculator follows the V-model
software development lifecycle. The calculator is used to evaluate the
economic viability of different technologies considered as being
potential candidates to provide rural connectivity. In this paper, the
evaluation is based on the techno-economic analysis approach.