The voice service expansion will pan six countries in Africa and will include the following Metaswitch solutions, including: its Clearwater vIMS Core, Perimeta vSBC, Service Assurance Server (SAS) and Multiservice Telephony Application Servers (MTAS). In addition, the network will also support the deployment of the Metaswitch Accession Communicator unified UC&C application.
“The Metaswitch solution will enable us to expand our business voice service footprint and portfolio rapidly by deploying a centralized network with regional hubs and much lighter networks in each country we serve,” said David Behr, group chief product officer for Liquid Telecom. “This significantly lowers both our capex and opex for services like SIP trunking and hosted UC and is backed by Metaswitch’s superior professional services and support organizations. Metaswitch has been a true partner to us throughout.”
Metaswitch’s Clearwater solution is a cloud-native virtual IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) core, while Perimeta is a virtualised Session Border Controller that distributes signalling and media functionality across commodity hardware in the cloud and the Accession powered hosted UC&C suite that enables carriers to extend their business telephony services to any end device. The solution also includes Metaswitch Service Assurance Server and MetaView Analytics, software that provides deep network insight to enhance the quality of experience and reduce repair time. Lastly the MetaSphere Multiservice Telephony Application Server (MTAS), featuring fully-virtualised Class 4 and Class 5 switching designed to support a broad array of voice and video applications.
“Agile providers like Liquid often out-innovate global incumbents, driven as they are to push the edge of network and service velocity using network functions virtualization. We look forward to continuing to work closely with Liquid as its service area and voice service portfolio continue to expand,” added Martin Lund, CEO of Metaswitch.
Metaswitch recently launched MaX by Metaswitch, which enables mobile network operators to deliver multi-persona and group collaboration services to businesses and consumers. As an offering MaX (which stands for mobile experience) builds on carrier-grade network voice, reach and reliability, in addition it delivers multi-persona call capabilities through the mobile native dialler, which is powered by network-based intelligence capabilities that simplify the handling of multiple business and personal identities.
Liquid Telecom also announced that it would is moving to 100% renewable power for its data centre in Nairobi, saving up to $44,000 in fuel each year. The East Africa Data Centre already uses 72.6% of its power from renewable sources, general manager Dan Kwach told Kenyan media, but the company will move to 100% by the end of the year.