Alcatel-Lucent in partnership with MTN, the largest telecom operator in Nigeria is launching a superfast, 100 gigabit-per-second fiber-optic network in Nigeria.
The 100G network which re-uses the existing 10G optical assets will be deployed across about 90% Nigerian land mass presently covered by MTN. This new investment drive will provide a state of art solution and also help tp preserve previous investments made by the telecom giant.
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.
According to Hatim Zougari, Country Senior Officer of Alcatel-Lucent in Nigeria: “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.”
This partnership will require Alcatel to provide support for MTn’s increased mobile subscribers by building a 100G DWDM/OTN network using Alcatel-Lucent’s 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) platform
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.”