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Huawei, Swift ensure Nigerian broadband boost

Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
By Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
Cape Town, 20 Nov 2015

Chinese telecoms firm Huawei helped Nigerian firm, Swift Networks, deploy its 'wireless fibre to the X' (WTTx) network solution to improve user experience.

Swift is a fixed wireless provider that connects services to businesses and residential subscribers in Lagos, Nigeria.

At a media roundtable during AfricaCom 2015 in Cape Town, VP for Huawei's wireless solutions sales, Mao Dun, said the company helped the Nigerian firm build a high-performance network which helped increase the company's subscribers.

"WTTx can be deployed very quickly, and from the operator point of view, they get very good value," Dun noted. "It also helps local people get access to broadband connection.

"From a technology point of view, we think the WTTx solution could be a major broadband department in the future for the African market," he said.

Huawei launched its WTTx solution earlier this year, to offer a larger coverage radius and make the radius of 3.5GHz band comparable to that of 3G at 2.1GHz.

WTTx also enables services such as video broadcasting, VOIP, and virtual private network, enhancing an operator's average revenue per user, according to Huawei.

Founder and MD of Swift Networks, Charles Anudu, explained that by deploying the WTTx solution, it was able to be one of the first providers to launch LTE in Nigeria.

Wireless has been instrumental to Swift's success, said Anudu. "The major advantage of WTTx is that the complete rollout of our LTE took a total of 90 days and we started to connect customers immediately. I don't think that could've been achievable using other technologies."