Posts
Alcatel-Lucent is opening up Africa's most populous
nation to the benefits of ultra-broadband
connectivity by launching a superfast, 100 gigabit-
per-second fiber-optic network with MTN Nigeria, a
subsidiary of Dubai-based MTN Group.
MTN Nigeria, which covers more than almost 90
percent of Nigeria's land mass, will deploy a 100G
network that re-uses existing 10G optical assets
thereby preserving MTN past investments while
ensuring future proof and state of art solution.
According to Lynda Saint-Nwafor, CTO of MTN
Nigeria said,"MTN realized we needed to upgrade
our network to meet customer expectations for ultra-
broadband connectivity and high reliability within
Nigeria's very competitive marketplace. We wanted a
state of the art solution that met three main criteria:
increased network reliability, a high degree of
scalability to prepare the network for 400G and
beyond, and preservation of our existing 10G
investment. Alcatel-Lucent's demonstrations showed
that they could meet all of our criteria and we look
forward to deploying the network overlay in 2014."
Nigeria's growing economy is fueling a proliferation
of mobile subscribers, which number about 275 to
every one landline in the country. As a result,
Nigeria has a significant need for reliable, mobile
broadband access to support growing demand for
bandwidth hungry services such as streaming video
plus the ever-increasing need from enterprises for
storage and data center connections. The new
network also gives MTN the capacity and flexibility
to offer wholesale services to other service providers in
the region.
MTN Nigeria is the biggest mobile operator in
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, and West
Africa region with more than 58 million subscribers
and also is the largest subsidiary in the MTN Group.
MTN Nigeria's network covers 88.8 percent of the
country's land mass giving 86.2 percent of the
population access to mobile services.
Alcatel-Lucent is supporting MTN Nigeria's rapid
growth in mobile subscribers by building a 100G
DWDM/OTN network using Alcatel-Lucent's 1830
Photonic Service Switch (PSS) platform, a family of
equipment that has been designed according to the
latest international SD-FEC zero touch photonics and
coherent technology.
"We knew that MTN's top priority was to provide
reliability to their customers but they also wanted to
offer ultra-broadband and they wanted to retain
usefulness of as much of their legacy network as
possible. We were able to show that we can give them
a cost-effective solution that accomplishes all of their
goals in a way that no one else could," said Hatim
Zougari, Country Senior Officer of Alcatel-Lucent in
Nigeria.
Alcatel-Lucent Agile Optical Networking combines
WDM, OTN, and GMPLS/ASON control plane
intelligence to assure scalable, versatile, reliable and
efficient transport at 100G and beyond.
ALLAFRICA.COM
No comments