The company won a US$29 million (C$34 million) deal earlier this month to provide “smart“ solar powered lamp posts to Cameroon.

Initially, the idea was to install street lamps that could be remotely controlled from a central point, Persad said.

“We thought, why not put in telecoms infrastructure as well so people can go online and make telephone calls too,” The Straits Times quoted him as saying.

The company plans to install WiFi, a short-range wireless technology, on about 4,000 lamps in Douala, providing Internet access even to some of the city‘s remote areas.

The project will bring the Internet to sparsely populated places where it is not profitable for telecommunications operators to lay telephone cables, Persad told the newspaper.

The company has received several inquiries from other African countries interested in setting up their own wireless Internet systems.

There were 60,000 Internet users in Cameroon as of 2002. Surfing the web has also caught on in the African country with 100 cyber-cafes operating in 2001.

The former French Cameroon and part of British Cameroon merged in 1961 to form the present country.