Telecom Firms Introduce 100G Fibre Optic Data Network

Alcatel-Lucent and MTN Nigeria are opening up Africa's most populous nation to the benefits of ultra-broadband connectivity by launching a super-fast, 100 gigabit-per-second fibre-optic network.

MTN Nigeria, which covers more than almost 90 percent of Nigeria's land mass, will deploy a 100G network that re-uses existing 10G optical assets thereby preserving MTN past investments while ensuring future proof and state of art solution.

Alcatel-Lucent says Nigeria's growing economy is fueling a proliferation of mobile subscribers, which number about 275 to every one landline in the country. As a result, Nigeria has a significant need for reliable, mobile broadband access to support growing demand for bandwidth hungry services such as streaming video plus the ever-increasing need from enterprises for storage and data centre connections. The new network also gives MTN the capacity and flexibility to offer wholesale services to other service providers in the region.

Presently, MTN Nigeria is the biggest mobile operator in Nigeria, with more than 58 million subscribers and a network covering 88.8 percent of the country's land mass giving 86.2 percent of the population access to mobile services.

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.

Alcatel-Lucent Agile Optical Networking combines WDM, OTN, and GMPLS/ASON control plane intelligence to assure scalable, versatile, reliable and efficient transport at 100G and beyond.

Lynda Saint-Nwafor, CTO of MTN Nigeria said: "MTN realised we needed to upgrade our network to meet customer expectations for ultra-broadband connectivity and high reliability within Nigeria's very competitive marketplace. We 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 our 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."

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."