MTN national network goes live

The national fibre network will link major population centres and economic hubs and interconnect with international submarine cable landing sites. By Eugene Morokolo.

MTN has announced that their national long distance fibre optic network between Germiston and Durban is nearing completion, with two major MTN nodes in New Germany and Durban ready to go live on the MTN network.

MTN  Chief Technology Officer, Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, says 50% of the fibre floating and over 95% of the total route trenching has been completed.

The network, which is being rolled out in collaboration with Neotel and Vodacom, is a key milestone in the company’s network footprint, he says.

Lambotharan explains that the network will link major population centres and economic hubs, as well as interconnect with the international submarine cable landing sites.

“We are excited about the two major nodes that have gone live as they are designed to accommodate significant capacity, thus enabling MTN to cater for additional customers in the area, where incremental capacity can also be used to service corporate customers with dedicated hosted and converged solutions,” he says.

The project, which began in 2009, marked one of the largest collaborations in the South African telecommunications industry – covering 5 000km and connecting major city centres across SA.  The operator says this initial route plays a significant role in its goals to take Africa to the world and bring the world to Africa by linking up with the EASSy undersea cable on the East coast.

“The network is designed to connect directly with MTN’s international cable assets, thereby allowing for Tier 1 Internet backbone access and high quality connectivity with other MTN operations across Africa and the Middle East,” Lambotharan adds.

MTN says it will be working hard to ensure that the remaining nodes are connected within the upcoming months, concluding the current phase of the company’s ambitious optic fibre network deployment.

“We look forward to the impact our newly live fibre optic network will have on changing business needs and connectivity options, as we aim to assist in closing the current gap that exists regarding last mile access,” concludes Lambotharan.