Mount Kilimanjaro is a major tourism attraction for Tanzania, with approximately 35,000 people attempting to scale its peak every year.
This week, in what Tanzanian officials called a ‘historic’ event, the “roof of Africa” has been connected to the Internet for the first time.
The country’s Information Minister, Nape Nnauye, declared that the national landmark is now officially online, after the Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation announced the launch of a broadband internet network to serve Mount Kilimanjaro.
“Enjoy fast internet today [on] Kilimanjaro,” Minister Nnauye said.
“All visitors will get connected … [up to] this point of the mountain,” he added during a visit to the mountain’s Horombo Huts campsite.
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The launch of the new network extends a high-speed web connection thousands of feet above the sea level, bringing the Internet to the tallest mountain on the continent.
With its Uhuru peak rising some 19,290 feet, Mount Kilimanjaro is Africa’s tallest, and it now hosts broadband gear at an altitude of 12,200 feet, near the Horombo Huts camp on the path to the summit.
According to Tanzania‘s Minister Nnauye, the summit of the mountain is expected to be connected to the Internet sometime by the end of 2022, but no specific date was given so far.
Only a small percentage of climbers successfully reach Mount Kilimanjaro’s peak, even though the mountain, while being the tallest in Africa, is far from being the world’s tallest.
Kilimanjaro is still dwarfed by the giants such as K2 in the Karakoram range bordering Pakistan, China and India, or the world-famous Mount Everest in the Himalayas.
