COMTEL Project is a program of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) aimed at creating a regional telecommunications infrastructure[1] for the 21 member states via a fiber backbone. This will help member states get rid of satellite links they currently use for their transit traffic between themselves going via Europe, America and Asia.
COMESA reportedly made a deal with Anderberg-Ericsson Consortium of Mauritius as the strategic equity partner[2] but it was later reported that Ericsson would not become an equity partner.[3] On 26 February 2007 it was reported that the COMTEL Project had stalled and that individual member countries would develop their own regional telecommunication infrastructures.[4]