Telecom Operators

A few days ago, Safaricom experienced nationwide network outages – restricting up to 31.8 million consumers from calling, using MPESA or texting, all across the country.

At AfricaCom 2019, leading pan-African telecoms group Liquid Telecom has launched the fastest direct land-based fiber link connecting East to West Africa. This breakthrough coast-to-coast digital corridor follows the completion of Liquid Telecom's new high-capacity fiber link running 2,600-kilometre (km) across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). 

Etisalat, the UAE-based telecommunications services provider, has worked with Huawei to complete the first trial of compact all-optical cross-connect (OXC) for the transport industry, enhancing connectivity and speed and delivering cutting-edge technology that promises to simplify optical architecture to build future networks.

On the sidelines of day 1 of AfricaCom 2019, MTN South Africa showcased a 5G trial on the C-band along with the Chinese telecom colossus Huawei.  The demo presented some 5G use-cases that included a live 5G speed test, with throughputs of up to 1.6Gbit/s, cloud virtual reality gaming, a robotic arm guessing platform, and augmented reality eyeglasses that demonstrated facial recognition.

Orange has partnered with US-based ThousandEyes, the Internet and cloud intelligence company, to deliver real time, end-to-end visibility on both its enterprise networks and the Open Transit Internet (OTI).

MTN Group announced sustained momentum in its results for the 9 months to September 2019 with service revenue growing 9,6% and its EBITDA margin improving by 0,6% to 35,1%. During the quarter the group added 3,5m subscribers and now serves 244 million customers across its 21 markets.

ZTE Corporation has showcased in partnership with MTN South Africa, 5G use cases on the existing live MTN network at AfricaCom 2019. Taking place in Cape Town, South Africa on 12 -14 November 2019, AfricaCom is the largest African telco, media, and technology event, which involves major operators in Africa.

Ooredoo announced the appointment of Mansoor Rashid Al-Khater as the new CEO of Ooredoo Tunisia, succeeding Youssef Al Masri, effective 5 November 2019.

At AfricaCom currently taking place in Cape Town, Orange is announcing the construction of a new international backbone network in West Africa. This infrastructure will be built around a terrestrial fiber optic network coupled with submarine cables and will benefit from centralized supervision. This multi-regional West African network will connect to the rest of the world through various submarine cables and will link up all the main capital cities in the region: Dakar, Bamako, Abidjan, Accra, Lagos, etc.

Vodafone Egypt has further renewed its partnership with Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) to transform the service provider’s Business Support System (BSS) into an industrialized, real-time converged environment. In addition, upgrades to the latest versions of Ericsson Charging and Ericsson Mediation will facilitate a seamless evolution towards 5G/IoT readiness by helping Vodafone Egypt meet customer demands with new offers, strengthen competitiveness, enable flexibility to meet market demands, and reduce costs through streamlined operations.