Liquid turbo-charges broadband with FTTH in Africa

Liquid Telecom, the pan-Africa service provider, has provided an update on its Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) roll-out, claiming the fastest ever African enterprise and retail broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps.

The telco has been laying an expansive fibre infrastructure, with a core competency of the next generation network being facilitated by laying fibre rings in and around the more densely populated urban areas across the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. A regional fibre ring has also been placed around the whole of East Africa, Liquid reports.

The fibre rings allow for traffic re-routing in the case of fibre being cut unexpectedly, guaranteeing uptime of network service.

Discussing the new fibre infrastructure being developed, Liquid’s CEO Nic Rudnick told the press at AfricaCom that more than 100km of new fibre is being laid out every week, and how the telco has been developing its fibre infrastructure for the past five years, with more than 18,000km of fibre being laid across the continent.

“Our FTTH service has made accessing streamed, high-definition media via the Internet a reality for homes and small businesses in some of the most remote parts of Africa. As a household or business in Africa, you cannot really benefit from global Internet services unless you have a high-speed fibre connection in addition to a mobile device,” he said. “We are an ambitious and innovative organisation determined to continue investing and improving telecoms in Africa because we believe that every individual has the right to be connected.”

At present, the service has gone live in Zambia and Zimbabwe, distributed through ISP subsidiary “ZOL”. Wholesale and retail FTTH services are planned to go live next year in Kenya, Rwanda and two currently unnamed countries.