Liquid Telecom upgrading East African fiber network to 500G capacity via Nokia

Liquid Telecom Kenya, part of the pan-African telecoms group Liquid Telecom, has signed a two-year deal with Nokia to upgrade its fiber network with Optical Transport Network (OTN) and DWDM technology that will enable an initial network capacity of 500 Gbps. The enhanced route travels from submarine cable landing stations in Mombasa, Kenya, to data centers in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and other neighboring countries, such as Tanzania, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

The upgrade, which leverages the Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS), began last October. It will affect the following routes:

• Nairobi – Mombasa, connecting data centers in the former to the submarine cable landing stations in the latter
• Nairobi – Kampala, which opens a new high-capacity route to Uganda, Rwanda, and beyond
• Nairobi – Namanga, which opens a new high-capacity route to Tanzania
• Nairobi – Ethiopia, which opens a new high-capacity route to Ethiopia and gives the landlocked country an alternative route to the submarine connection in Djibouti.

"We believe that every individual on the African continent has the right to be connected. This is the vision that has been driving our network expansion across Africa,” commented Ben Roberts, CTO of Liquid Telecom. “By teaming up with Nokia, we have been able to quickly adapt to the industry's rapid growth within the region and greater access to our high-speed fiber network and cloud services across East Africa. This comes at a time when more mobile operators are planning to increase their backbone bandwidth as they prepare for 5G, which is driving the demand for high-speed city-to-city internet links."

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