Liquid Telecom completes 100G upgrades of the East African fibre ring

Nic Rudnick, Group CEO for Liquid Telecom (Credit: TechCentral)

Pan-African telecoms group Liquid Telecom, a subsidiary of Econet Global, has completed 100G upgrades to key routes on the East Africa Fibre Ring.

It has used DWDM technology from Ekinops, allowing Liquid Telecom to offer the largest lit backhaul capacity in Africa. It provides up to ten times the speed of previously used 10G waves.

For the first time, Liquid Telecom will provide 100G links to the cities of Kigali in Rwanda, Kampala and Tororo in Uganda, and Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya, with other 100G upgrades planned for the East Africa Fibre Ring in the near future.

Nic Rudnick, Group CEO for Liquid Telecom, said the upgrade ensures that its fibre backbone can meet the rising demand for high bandwidth video and internet services from businesses and consumers throughout the region.

The East Africa Fibre Ring forms a key part of Liquid Telecom’s pan-African fibre network, which now stretches over 50,000 km. Completed in 2014, it links together Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, with onward connectivity to Liquid Telecom’s fibre networks in Burundi and eastern DRC. It also offers direct access to international subsea cables.

The East Africa Fibre Ring remains the first fully redundant regional fibre ring with several routing options, ensuring that customers are not affected by fibre cuts and network failures. In the event of an incident, internet traffic is automatically and instantly re-routed around the ring.

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