Liquid telecom scoops best African wholesale carrier award

It is the second year in succession Liquid Telecom has won the gong, beating off strong competition from WIOCC, Orange and PCCW Global.

According to the panel of judges: “Liquid Telecom has again shown great promise and ambitious plans for development in Africa. It has aggressively targeted expansion of its fibre footprint in the continent and is attempting to access a range of countries where infrastructure maintenance remains the most challenging in the world.”

The judges said Liquid Telecom’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) strategy was a significant highlight to the company being recognised, with the firm having acquired four companies in 2013.

They also said the company commitment to serving the region’s communications sector was a key highlight, where Liquid Telecom has been diverting traffic as a result of multiple cuts to undersea cables to enable redundancy on a number of routes from Africa to Europe.

Nic Rudnick, Liquid Telecom’s chief executive officer (CEO), said: “At Liquid Telecom we celebrate the people who make it happen. This award is a real team effort and recognises our company’s drive and ambition to provide internet connectivity across the whole of Africa”.

It is the second week in a row Liquid Telecom has been recognised after it bagged Best Connectivity Solution in Africa at last week’s AfricaCom 2013, in Cape Town, for building the longest fibre links in Africa.

Organised by Capacity Magazine and now in its eighth year, the Global Carrier Awards have become the biggest and most prestigious awards event of the wholesale telecoms calendar.

HumanIPO reported last week Liquid Telecom had built the first fibre optic cable into Somalia, connecting the country to undersea cables by fibre for the first time.

“We are providing the people of Somalia with access to the global internet at higher speeds and with more capacity than ever before,” said Rudnick.

source: www.humanipo.com

Africans benefit from Global technology

The 2013 AfricaCom conference and technology exhibition in Cape Town, South Africa, focused on new technologies that will drive development in Africa. It equally uncovered new ways of managing customer experience and how they will benefit from the evolving technologies. Emma Okonji writes
Technology companies from across the globe, last week, gathered in Cape Town, South Africa for the 2013 AfricaCom event to discuss new technologies that will speed up development among African countries.

At the conference, which was organised by Informa Telecoms had Nigeria fully represented at the 2013 conference and exhibition, through Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies like Etisalat, MTN, Cisco, Qualcomm, Ericsson, among others that have presence and are currently operating in Nigeria.
Paramount among the new technologies that were discussed and exhibited, were the Long Term Evolution (LTE), including evolving technologies that will drive big data penetration, enhance voice telephony, speed up mobile money penetration, as well as enrich customer experience across African countries.
Etisalat Nigeria used the occasion to announce winners of the software application competition it organised in Nigeria. It presented the winners during the AfricaCom Awards Night, which it co-sponsored with other ICT companies like PCCW Global, MTN, Mahindra Comviva, and Orange.
The LTE Technology
Technology has over time, evolved from 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 3.5G, to the Long Term Evolution technology, otherwise known as 4G LTE technology.
The 4G LTE technology, which is currently being adopted globally, is designed to speed up the broadband technology. The conference advised ICT companies operating in Africa to begin investments in LTE technology, since it is the emerging technology that will drive fast broadband penetration even in remote communities across Africa.

source: www.thisdaylive.com