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Liquid Telecom owns and operates Africa’s biggest independent fibre optic network
Nokia has signed a deal with pan African telco, Liquid Telecom, to upgrade the company’s fibre network to support OTN/DWDM technology with an initial network capacity of 500G. The upgrade will result in faster, more reliable connectivity from the Indian Ocean to datacentres in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.
The deal will boost connectivity in the East Africa region.
“As an industry-leading optical network provider, Nokia has enabled customers to maximize network capacity and efficiency while supporting the deployment of mission-critical services. With our DWDM/OTN network, Liquid Telecom can offer the high capacity and low latency needed for its customers, ensuring an excellent customer experience and ultimately connecting all of Africa to the digital world. This network will be an important, additional backbone network with Nokia technology across Africa,” said Daniel Jaeger, head of the Central, East and West Africa Market Unit at Nokia.
The network upgrade will mean that Liquid Telecom is the first telco in Africa to connect through their own network with nearly every country bordering Kenya whilst also providing an alternate fibre route to submarine networks for other landlocked countries in the region.
“We believe that every individual on the African continent has the right to be connected. This is the vision that has been driving our network expansion across Africa. By teaming up with Nokia, we have been able to quickly adapt to the industry’s rapid growth within the region and greater access to our high-speed fibre network and cloud services across East Africa. This comes at a time when more mobile operators are planning to increase their backbone bandwidth as they prepare for 5G which is driving the demand for high speed city to city internet links,” said Ben Roberts, CTO, Liquid Telecom.
The network upgrade is expected to provide enhanced services to thousands of corporate customers and FTTH users and has the potential to reach over 85 million mobile subscribers across East Africa.
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