A new long-haul fibre network from Liquid Telecom promises to bring high speed connectivity to areas without reliable access
Liquid Telecom announced in a statement today that it has chosen Ekinops as a supplier for its new long-haul DWDM network across South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.
According to Liquid, the network spans more than 2,500km and features the longest uninterrupted fibre spans on the continent.
“This expansion of Liquid’s Pan-African network will help bring the Internet to areas starving for reliable, high-speed access,” Liquid said in its statement.
The new network carries multiple 10G (10 Gigabits per second) wavelengths and Liquid said it can scale to support many more 10G and 100G services.
Liquid said that it and Ekinops have been awarded the “Best Fixed Network Innovation” at this year’s Global Telecoms Business Innovation awards for their joint work in this project for building Africa’s longest single span fibre links.
They have successfully deployed spans that cover more than 310 km without inline amplifiers, Liquid said.
According to Liquid, typical long-haul optical networks require an amplifier site every 100km to amplify the signal. In rural Africa where the distance between towns can be more than 400km this is a major challenge.
The costs of building an amplifier site every 100 km, including the power generator, site security, and roads to access the site, are enormous, Liquid said.
This is one of the key reasons Liquid said it chose Ekinops. With the DynaFEC dynamic forward error correction technology from Ekinops, Liquid said it was able to reduce the amplification sites its network would have needed from 16 to 5.
“Congratulations to everyone who worked on this project, which has set the standard for the industry,” said Nic Rudnick, CEO of Liquid Telecom.
“We choose to build and own our fibre networks in Africa wherever possible, and we trust Ekinops to help us cross the massive distances found in this continent.”
Good ! If there is something that gets on my nerves when am in Zambia it is the slow internet connections.
its bandwidth,hoping it will be cheaper.
This day and age our govt must invest heavily in technology among other things.
I agree with you sloooooooow internet connectivity gets on my raw nerves too when in Zed.
Every other projects are so behind and never given the due attention, financial support deserved, except by-elections.
There is no shortage of money but our leaders lack political will to undertake development projects with the same vigor as in by-elections…… and our citizens just look and accept mediocrity as if they are refugees.
stand up and demand better
ba liquid but the fiber is their and up.lusaka-harare-bulawayo_jbg-port elizabeth.
unless you got a different routent .the current one its ever down atleast twice a week
Our journalists are hard-wired to taking down sugar-coated statements like they are at a swearing-in ceremony at State House. They should be asking the CEO of Liquid Telecom whose company is a wholesale supplier of fibre optic broadband about his tariffs/rates – are they competitive? Someone is going have to pay for this innovative technology; though this is welcome news for commercial clients in Zambia the question is can the domestic consumer afford this?
This is the selfsame reason I always say our gov’t should be in the forefront in pulling these cables from the oceans like our Kenyan colleagues then subcontract distribution to the private sector if we are going to enjoy cheaper broadband rates in turn stimulate growth.
You have been talking about this for the last decade, Just do it……..yaaaaaaaaba. The internet has the potential to create the much needed jobs for the youth in Zambia
For real! They are ever talking about fibre optics this and fibre optics that but I see no change. Africonnect have minted the money in zambia offering the poxy 512KB download speeds and calling it broadband connection chargeable at $260.00 a month. I worked on a project in Zambia for several months on end and required a dedicatated line 24/7 Internet connectivity and paid $260.00 for a meagre 512KB when I only have to pay $20.00 for a massive 4-8MB equivalent to 8000KB for those that want to compare. My Africonnect connectivity would go in 15 and have times into my connection here in the western world in terms of speed but it is $240.00 more expensive. Africa! is this the reason our continent is shaped like a question mark?
Spot on….this is the same with mobile phone tarriffs, they are giving the consumer mediocre services and charging 20 times as much and our gov’t is busy building pointless football stadia in Mongu and Livingstone; then calling that development.