RAD Data Communications: Partnering with African Carriers to Roll Out High Speed Ethernet Services and Transition Their Legacy Networks to NGNs

Two related, if not complementary trends characterize African telecoms today.

The first is the rapid deployment of fiber infrastructure. With the linking of Africa’s coastal, urban and commercial hubs to the undersea fiber cables, carriers are taking advantage of all that new fiber to roll out advanced Metro Ethernet networks, over which they can offer their enterprise customers the latest SLA-assured Ethernet services. Furthermore, fiber connectivity is now reaching much further into the interior, encouraged by government sponsored initiatives to bring modern communications solutions to larger segments of the population.

The second trend is legacy service migration. In most cases this means moving up from slower speeds to high-speed DSL copper circuits as well as fiber, and supporting both TDM and newer Ethernet services. However, in this use case, the transport layer is still based on SDH and solutions must be found to hand the traffic off to Ethernet and SDH backbones.

Innovative Broadband Solutions Reduce CapEx and OpEx
The African market has one of the world’s highest operator-to-subscriber ratios. Fierce competition forces carriers to meet intense cost pressures and adjust their business models to fit the profile of their potential customers. As they shift their focus from building their market presence to improving profitability, the carriers’ need for innovative broadband access solutions that enable significant CapEx and OpEx savings is greater than ever.

 “RAD is uniquely positioned to partner with African carriers because its Service Assured Access solutions, which we will premier at Africa Com, uniquely address this need,” states Noam Dor, RAD Sales Director for Africa.

Designed for providers of business services, as well as for wholesale providers, mobile operators and cloud access providers, Service Assured Access features a comprehensive service lifecycle toolkit that can be implemented in a variety of deployment mode scenarios over various bearer circuits: fiber, DSL and PDH. Service Assured Access significantly increases carrier revenue while lowering all aspects of operational costs in the access network.

Multiple Deployment Scenarios to Maximize Flexibility

Service Assured Access can do this because it is easily adapted to different deployment scenarios. “Network build outs typically take place at a varied pace,” Dor explains.” Carriers can implement RAD’s Service Assured Access solution to fit their specific rollout plans, existing infrastructure, migration plans, and CapEx/OpEx objectives,” he adds. “In this way, they can build a complete Carrier Ethernet access network, including smart demarcation and Ethernet service pre-aggregation, or just a part of the network to facilitate, for example, inter-carrier ENNI handoff, even when the edge or aggregation layer is provided by another vendor,” he adds. “In addition, they can use RAD’s MiNID Carrier Ethernet NID on an SFP sleeve to easily upgrade their existing Ethernet switches and normalize their network to Carrier Ethernet.”

Choose a Migration Path that Best Suits Your Needs
“RAD lowers total cost of ownership by streamlining implementation and better utilizing existing infrastructure,” Dor concludes. “Service Assured Access extends the operator’s planning horizons and lets them choose the migration path that best suits their needs by upgrading network elements as needed, avoiding forced investments in complete overhauls.”

African Carriers that have already implemented RAD’s Service Assured Access solution include Camtel, which uses RAD’s Carrier Ethernet Demarcation Devices to facilitate the delivery of business services in Cameroon’s major cities, and Main One in Nigeria, which has implemented nationwide Carrier Ethernet services.

RAD’s Global Presence

RAD’s installed base exceeds 12,000,000 units and encompasses more than 150 carriers and operators in 165 around the world, including 50 in Africa.

With a presence in Africa that dates back over two decades, RAD’s products have been deployed by virtually all of the continent’s major carriers, service providers and mobile operators, as well as the private sector, banks, oil exploration and petroleum companies, public power and water utilities, transportation systems, universities, and governmental and military networks.

RAD Data Communications is a member of the $1.2 billion RAD Group of companies, a world leader in networking and internetworking product solutions.

RAD Contact:

Ilan Seidner, Director of Marketing Communications

Tel: +972-3-6458107

Fax: +972-3-6498250

E-mail: ilan_s@rad.com

 Visit RAD Data Communications at AfricaCom 2013. Come and meet them at stand F07 by registering for your free ticket to AfricaCom Here