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Nigeria Poised to Benefit From Superfast Optic Network(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Alcatel-Lucent, the French global telecommunications equipment company, has partnered with MTN Nigeria to launch a superfast fiber-optic network. According to the firms, the launch of the 100 gigabit-per-second network will open up Africa's most populous nation to the benefits of ultra-broadband connectivity. 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. Lynda Saint-Nwafor, CTO of MTN Nigeria said MTN realized it needed to upgrade its 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," said Saint-Nwafor. Hatim Zougari, Country Senior Officer of Alcatel-Lucent in Nigeria, said the company 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," Zougari said. MTN Nigeria is the biggest mobile operator in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country. It has more than 58 million subscribers and also is the largest subsidiary in the MTN Group. Its network covers 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. Copyright CAJ News Agency. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |