Alcatel-Lucent is launching a 100 gigabit-per-second fibre-optic network with MTN Nigeria.
MTN Nigeria will deploy a 100G network that re-uses existing 10G optical assets, thereby preserving MTN past investments while ensuring a future proof and state of art solution.
Nigeria’s growing economy is fuelling a proliferation of mobile subscribers, which number about 275 to each 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 centre 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. With more than 58 million subscribers it is also the largest subsidiary in the MTN Group. MTN Nigeria’s network covers 88.8% of the country’s land mass, giving 86.2% 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. 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.
Lynda Saint-Nwafor, CTO of MTN Nigeria said: “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.”
