MTN consolidates its position in the bandwidth-hungry data market

MTN Network Solutions (NS) has beefed up its capacity to cater for the growing demand for more international Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Internet services.

MTN NS Chief Executive Mike Brierley says MTN is now ideally positioned to offer customers carrier class broadband which gives them flexibility in their networks, runs multimedia applications like Voice over IP, and offers advanced functionality, all of which are essential elements in a dynamic enterprise environment.

‘’The MTN Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network offers our customers alternative routing options, backed by Service Level Agreements, to propel their businesses and gain a competitive advantage,’’ says Brierley.

The upgrade has resulted in the installation of a second 45Mb circuit between Johannesburg and New York. MTN NS commissioned a second 45Mb circuit on the SAT-3 cable from Telkom and British Telecom.

‘’This followed a year of successful growth and increased demand,’’ Brierley said.

MTN NS has now done a full upgrade of its London POP infrastructure and also commissioned a full Point of Presence (POP) in New York. The POP provides alternative routing from Sisembra in Portugal and enables IP-VPN services to terminate directly in the United States.

SAT-3 will remain the best way of connecting internationally until such time as the alternate Eassy cable (East Coast fibre between Durban and Abidjan) and the WASC cable (West African Submarine cable) are commissioned.

‘’In anticipation of vastly improved resilience, MTN has taken an interest in both these new cable installations,’’ Brierley says.

The UK and US-based POPs are fully interconnected with dual STM-1 transatlantic fibre links. MTN has established new direct IP transit links with Sprint and Abovenet in New York.

‘’The upgrading of the MTN NS London POP has also been done in preparation for bringing a number of MTN African operations, e.g. Uganda, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, onto a single international infrastructure in 2006, as well as starting to build a full Africa MPLS IP-VPN network,’’ Brierley says.

MTN NS says it is ideally positioned for the growth of broadband technologies such as EDGE and 3G with its additional investments.