The Tanzanian government has installed a broadband internet network to serve Mount Kilimanjaro, which boasts the tallest peak on the African continent, extending a high-speed web connection thousands of meters above sea level.
The state-run Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation unveiled the move on Tuesday, with Information Minister Nape Nnauye declaring that the internet is now accessible even on the “roof of Africa.”
“Enjoy fast internet today [on] Kilimanjaro,” Nnauye added in a follow-up post celebrating the event.
With its Uhuru peak standing some 5,880 meters (19,290 feet) high, the mountain is Africa’s tallest, and now hosts broadband gear at an altitude of 3,720 meters (12,200 feet), near the Horombo Huts camp on the path to the summit.
“All visitors will get connected ... [up to] this point of the mountain,” the IT minister said during a visit to the campsite.
Nnauye went on to say that the summit of the mountain is expected to be connected sometime by the end of 2022, but did not specify exactly when.
Kilimanjaro is a major tourism draw for Tanzania, with an estimated 35,000 people attempting to scale the rock every year, according to AFP and a number of other outlets. Only a small percentage successfully reach the peak, though the mountain is far from the world’s tallest, still dwarfed by monoliths such as K2 in the Karakoram range bordering Pakistan, China and India, or the world-famous Mount Everest in the Himalayas.