INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cabling
Roadmap to drive future of
Nigerian telecoms
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G
lobacom has announced a roadmap
to drive the future of Nigeria's
telecommunication sector, including
a plan to introduce new data analytics tools
to capture subscribers' real time experience.
According to Sanjib Roy, Globacom's
Group Technical Director, the company has
extensively invested in network upgrades,
including swapping of legacy facilities. Roy
said the firm is poised to have its best year
ever in terms of quality of service, data
speed and capacity expansion.
He added that the tons of network
equipment that has been brought into the
country during the past year has helped
Globacom build a brand-new network with
superior quality and higher capacity.
"Activation is looking up, traffic into the
network is going up and consumption is up,"
said Roy. "A new e-band microwave radio
technology has been deployed, resulting in
increase in backhaul bandwidth to 1.5–2gb
per link. More than 1,800 BTS and equal
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number of NodeBs have been swapped in
Lagos, Oyo, Ogun and Rivers states. Also,
supplied and deployed are 1,000 microwaves
to modernise the transmission network
to IP. The capacity of Glo 1, Globacom's
submarine cable, has been upgraded to
300G, giving huge bandwidth for mobile and
Enterprise business.
"All these have been possible because of
quick supply and effective deployment. We
have also deployed more than 2,000 new
generators and 6,000 new batteries to boost
customer experience. Work is on-going on
more than 1,000km of fibre routes where
road construction had affected fibre cabling.”
Roy said deployment of high wattage
Radio Remote Units (RRU) for 3G services
and multi-sector antenna had been
concluded for better 3G indoor coverage,
high speed data download, signal quality
and network coverage.
Globacom is also upgrading the capacity of
existing microwave links, converting TDM
links to IP for 2G and 3G, and is deploying
high capacity microwave back up links to
increase data back haul capacity and protect
traffic against fibre cut.
"We are using a scientific and methodical
way of rolling out new sites based on
feedback from regions on where the sites are
needed to address customer complaints,”
said Roy.
“We are also planning to rollout LTE in
1,800 band this year in major cities to
increase our 4G LTE penetration and allow
higher handset adoption in order to enable
the masses to harness the future. New
enterprise products that will help SMEs
and businesses in rural areas to grow in a
digital environment are also in the works.
New sites will also be built in rural areas
to bridge the digital divide between cities
and villages.”
Globacom is set to execute a conceptual
launch of 5G in 700mhz band for an Internet
of Things application this year. n
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