Alcatel-Lucent, a mobile, internet protocol (IP) and optics technologies company, is set to partner with communications giant Bharti Airtel to help meet its expanding demand for mobile broadband services in Africa.
To achieve this, Alcatel-Lucent will be supplying advanced new IP-based networking technology to support Airtel’s delivery of latest mobile broadband data and video services.
This is necessitated by the increasing ownership of smartphones in Africa, which in return requires higher bandwidth mobile data services including video calling and online gaming.
“This new backbone network will support all mobile broadband services to Airtel’s 17 affiliates across Africa – serving 60 million customers – and a more interconnection to global networks including the United Kingdom (UK).
“The single international network would offer a simpler structure to improve performance, reliability, capacity convergence and interoperable mechanisms for faster service recovery,” Bharti Airtel said.
Alcatel-Lucent will assist Airtel’s expansion by evolving the telecommunication company’s data transport and mobile backhaul networks in Africa.
Airtel is also investing in a common platform for Layer Two and Three service provision which
will bring about a reduction in the time of delivering the company’s various services.
Eben Albertyn, Bharti Airtel’s representative in Africa, said his company is engaging the services of Alcatel-Lucent for it to maximize the benefits of technology. By doing this, he said Airtel will 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,” he said.
