Kenya cable ushers in broadband era

The first of four undersea cables bringing high-speed internet to eastern Africa has gon live. The BBC's Anne Waithera, in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, finds a nation impatient to join the broadband revolution.

In a busy cyber cafe in Nairobi dozens of people, mostly young, are hunched over computers surfing the net.

I try to strike up a conversation with one of them but he will not even look my way. Without looking up from the monitor he signals with his hand that I should wait until he is done.

This is perfectly understandable. It costs slightly less than $1 to surf for about an hour in a cyber-cafe in Nairobi and internet connection speeds are very slow.

But he is ready to talk after he pays his bill.

"It's not good. It's hanging and keeps wasting time and frustrating me," he says.

Another frustrated user complains: "I've spent more than 15 minutes instead of 10."

But things are about to change for these internet users.

The Seacom undersea fibre-optic cable goes live on Thursday, promising changes that will be felt right across eastern and southern Africa.