MTN Nigeria Partners Alcatel-Lucent To Boost Connectivity

MTN Nigeria and Alcatel-Lucent have launched a superfast, 100 gigabit-per-second fiber-optic network that will see the mobile telecommunications company offer ultra-broadband connectivity to its over 58 million subscribers in the West African country.

“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,” said Lynda Saint-Nwafor, CTO of MTN Nigeria.

According to her, the company 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 its 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,” Saint-Nwafor added.

With the growing demand for data in Nigeria, whose economic growth is fueling a proliferation of mobile subscribers, there is need for reliable, mobile broadband access. The new network also gives MTN the capacity and flexibility to offer wholesale services to other service providers in the region.

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.

Hatim Zougari, Country Senior Officer of Alcatel-Lucent in Nigeria, said: “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.”

The new technology is expected to help MTN Nigerian maintain its position as one of the leading telecoms operators in Nigeria and boost its slowing growth in the country. The company’s network is available on 88.8 percent of the West African country’s land giving 86.2 percent of the population access to mobile services.