Africa Mobile Networks, a group of companies with a vision of building mobile network base stations serving rural communities across sub-Saharan Africa, has utilised SpaceX’s Starlink constellation to provide satellite backhaul at more than 100 of its rural base stations in Nigeria
On average, traffic has increased by approximately 45% across all sites that have been migrated to use LEO backhaul and the organisation expects to double the number of sites using the constellation by the end of the year.
By using Starlink’s LEO constellation to provide mobile backhaul, AMN is able to unlock the full capability of the AMN Radio Node (ARN) to support the ever-increasing amounts of bandwidth and data volumes demanded by subscribers.
The flexibility of AMN’s Radio Node has also contributed to the traffic increase across these sites. AMN’s ARN is a multi-carrier and multi-technology (2G/3G/4G) radio node which can operate up to 5 simultaneous carriers in either 2G+ 3G or 2G+4G configuration. By using LEO backhaul in conjunction with the software-defined AMN Radio Node, AMN has been able to increase the BTS capacity remotely with no change to the existing BTS hardware on site. Some rural AMN sites are processing more than 25,000 voice minutes per day. Prior to the installation of AMN’s base station, many of these communities did not have access to any mobile network.
AMN records 45% traffic increase using Starlink constellation
AMN is dedicated its vision of a fully connected world. (Image source: AMN)
