Under the terms of the agreement, the new upgrade will support OTN/DWDM technology with an initial network capacity of 500G. This is turn will result in a faster and more reliable connection along the route from the Indian Ocean to data centres in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and other neighbouring countries.
"We believe that every individual on the African continent has the right to be connected, said Ben Roberts, CTO of Liquid Telecom. “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."
The network transformation will be powered by the Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) and enables Liquid Telecom to meet the growing demand from its carrier, mobile operator and internet service provider customers, for high capacity inter-network services.
Additionally, the network will support high-capacity connections from the submarine landing stations in Mombasa, Kenya, to major data centres in Nairobi, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, as well as surrounding markets.
"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,” added Daniel Jaeger, head of the central, east and west Africa market unit at Nokia. “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."
