Telecom giant Bharti Airtel says its Africa Connect network is aimed at improving Africa’s connectivity with the rest of the world. It will drive internet and data growth in the continent.
In addition, Africa Connect network will be a major catalyst as the continent moves into the next phase of digital growth and enhance the growth of internet and data services in the continent, Airtel said on Monday.
Africa Connect, which has an integrated fiber and satellite network with 42 Points of Presence (PoP) spread across 17 African countries, will offer integrated telecom applications and solutions.
The transmission and IP services include submarine capacity, leased circuits, Ethernet and backhauls, global and regional IP transit, managed Internet, bandwidth on demand for customers, a suite of satellite and managed services portfolio to enterprises and carriers in the region. The network is supported by infrastructure built by other regional carriers.
“Our telecom offerings together with our end to end service modules will help expand our access to growth markets in the region and consolidate our efforts of making India as a hub for global internet traffic,” said Ajay Chitkara, CEO – Global Business, Bharti Airtel.
Africa Connect is designed to augment the international connectivity into Africa through next generation cables including SEACOM, Eassy, Teams, WACS, Globalcom1, SEAMEWE4, IMEWE and EIG in East, West and North Africa.
Airtel says this allows enterprise and carriers customers’ seamless connectivity to the key global business hubs via multiple routes. Apart from the integrated managed services, 42 new PoPs will offer customized MPLS infrastructure to the enterprise customers across 17 countries in which Airtel already operates.
The new network further augmented its reach and connectivity using the multiple Network to Network Interconnects (NNI’s) that has more than 25 local network partners.
The network interconnects with Bharti Airtel’s landing station in Mumbai thereby allowing access to the company’s terrestrial express connectivity into the SAARC countries and infrastructure across the Pacific to the United States.
