Bharti airtel (“airtel”), a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, today announced the launch of its Africa Connect network aimed at enhancing Africa’s connectivity with the rest of the world and add to the data carriage capacity in the Continent. Africa Connect is expected to contribute to growth of internet and data services in the Continent, which is home to some of fastest growing telecom markets in the world.
Africa Connect has an integrated fiber and satellite network with 42 Points of Presence (PoP) spread across 17 African countries. The network will offer a variety of integrated telecom applications and solutions. The suite of products in the area of Global Transmission and IP Services include Submarine Capacity, Global leased circuits, Ethernet and Backhauls, Global and regional IP Transit, Managed Internet, Bandwidth on demand for customers, a comprehensive 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.
Ajay Chitkara, CEO – Global Business, Bharti airtel, said “Africa Connect is in consonance with our underlying theme to serve one of the fastest growing data markets in the world. Africa is also emerging as an economic hub and we are uniquely poised to connect the continent to the rest of the world and fully serve the growing bandwidth demand. Our full-suite of integrated telecom offerings together with our end to end service modules will help expand our access to high growth markets in the region and consolidate our efforts of making India as a hub for global internet traffic.”
Andre Beyers, Chief Marketing Officer, airtel Africa said, “With Africa seeing a significant jump in the growth of data and connectivity this initiative will help us in meeting the bandwidth requirements and diverse needs of our customers. The 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.”
Africa Connect augments 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. This allows enterprise and carriers customers’ seamless connectivity to the key global business hubs via multiple routes. Apart from the fully 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 & connectivity using the multiple Network to Network Interconnects (NNI’s) that has more than 25 local network partners. The entire 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.
