Alcatel-Lucent has revealed plans to supply Bharti Airtel with advanced IP-based networking technology to support the delivery of mobile broadband data and video services
Alcatel-Lucent said that rising smartphone ownership in Africa has been driving demand for high-bandwidth mobile data services and, to meet this demand, the company will evolve Airtel Africa’s data transport and mobile backhaul networks using its IP/MPLS technology.
It added, “This backbone network will support all mobile broadband services to Airtel’s 17 affiliates across Africa, serving 60mn customers, as well as a much more robust interconnection to global networks including the UK.”
The network will offer a simple structure to improve performance, reliability, capacity convergence and interoperable mechanisms for service recovery.
The Airtel investment will include a common platform for Layer 2 and Layer 3 service provisioning to reduce the time of delivering the variety of service types.
Airtel Africa chief technical officer Eben Albertyn said, “Alcatel-Lucent is helping us fully-utilise the advantages of IP/MPLS technology to economically handle high volumes of a variety of mobile broadband data and video services.
“The new network implementation not only provides a substantially improved quality of service for our current customers, it also does an excellent job of preparing Airtel Africa for future international expansion opportunities.”
Alcatel-Lucent Africa vice-president Daniel Jaeger said, “Airtel Africa IP/MPLS network will carry all the international traffic of Airtel in Africa connecting it to the peering point in UK.”
