At AfricaCom 2014, which is currently taking place at CTICC in Cape Town, Liquid Telecom unveiled its progress in laying “Fibre To The Home” which it is, according to the company, providing to homes and small businesses with unlimited data packages as well as speeds up to 100Mbps.
According to Liquid Telecom, the service has already gone live in Zambia as well as in Zimbabwe via retail ISP ZOL Zimbabwe, part of the Liquid Telecom Group. Plans are now underway to launch FTTH on a wholesale and retail basis in Kenya, Rwanda and two further countries early next year.
At AfricaCom 2014, Liquid Telecom’s CEO Nic Rudnick revealed that the company is laying more than 100km of new fibre every week. Rudnick revealed that Liquid Telecom’s goal is to deliver “The Real Internet” into Africa by setting the highest possible standards for internet access with the fastest available broadband speeds and widest penetration across the continent.
Rudnick, who was recently named as one of the 100 most influential people in the global telecoms industry, outlined the four requirements needed for FTTH to work in Africa:- International connectivity at a reasonable price – provided by subsea cables.
Terrestrial backbone networks bringing capacity inland – Liquid Telecom has spent more than five years building what is now Africa’s largest fibre network spanning more than 18,000km across borders and connecting to all the subsea cables.
Fibre rings around towns – Liquid Telecom’s fibre network includes fibre rings around the major towns and cities in DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as a regional fibre ring around the whole of East Africa. The rings enable Liquid Telecom to guarantee uptime as traffic can be rerouted in the event of a fibre cut so that service is not interrupted. Liquid Telecom builds its own fibre branches both within and outside the rings to provide FTTH.
GPON FTTH technology – Liquid Telecom has proved that GPON technology is the most suitable FTTH technology for the African market.
According to Rudnick, Liquid’s FTTH service enables faster links to the Internet, which essentially brings smaller businesses the same speeds as large corporations, as well as enables the use of cloud-based services. Rudnick stated that:
Our FTTH service has made accessing streamed, high-definition media via the Internet a reality for homes and small businesses in some of the remotest parts of Africa.
