MTN’s enterprise customers with global operations are now able to communicate with their branches and employees worldwide. This follows the signing of an agreement between MTN and leading international telecommunications provider PCCW Global, which will enable MTN to expand coverage of its global Virtual Private Network (VPN) to countries where it currently does not have a presence in Europe, Asia and North America.
“PCCW Global has extensive network coverage across the world. This agreement will enable MTN Business customers to benefit from a greater footprint. As such, MTN Business can now offer Wide Area Network (WAN), Local Area Network (LAN) and managed Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) services in the markets where PCCW has presence,” says Elia Tsouros, Acting Executive for the MTN Group Enterprise Business Unit.
PCCW Global is excited to collaborate with MTN and support the growing global connectivity needs of their African enterprise customers, according to Mike van den Bergh, Chief Marketing Officer of PCCW Global. “Our global network and managed Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) solutions now provide connectivity to over 130 countries and 3 000 cities across the globe. We are very excited about this agreement which will help facilitate business between Africa’s rapidly expanding market and the rest of the world,” says van den Bergh.
MTN launched its global VPN service last year, with extensive presence in six countries – South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Djibouti, Tanzania and the United Kingdom. Since then, a further five countries have been added to this footprint, namely, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Zambia and Senegal.
“These initiatives to broaden MTN’s reach and coverage are all aimed at making the lives of enterprise customers a whole lot brighter,” says Tsouros. He adds that MTN is looking to further expand its footprint into other markets in Africa in the coming months.
MTN’s global VPN service offers a layer-3 service (MPLS, Internet Protocol (IP) and VPN) with the ability to prioritise customer traffic on an application by application basis. Customers are thus able to rank their connectivity needs between voice and data, as and when required and can also combine different types of data onto a single network.
