MTN, Liquid join forces to tackle Africa

As the fight to retain and attract customers enters a new phase, MTN and Liquid Telecoms are trying to find new ways to tackle the African telecoms space. The two African telcos announced on Monday that they have teamed up to provide a larger connectivity footprint across Africa for its customers. But are the two telcos doing enough for their customers. By Gugu Lourie

On Monday, MTN Group – Africa’s largest mobile phone operator, announced that it has partnered with Liquid Telecom – independent data, voice and IP provider in eastern, central and southern Africa – to access to each other’s fixed and wireless networks in countries on the African continent, where one party may not currently have presence.

The partnership covers wholesale, carrier-to-carrier, high speed broadband, enterprise and fixed data services across Africa.

The agreement with Liquid Telecom gives MTN the ability to service its multinational enterprise customers in Burundi, DRC, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

While, Liquid Telecom will now have a presence in are Benin, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Republic, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan and Swaziland.

The partnership enables Liquid Telecom to offer businesses gigabit-speed services accompanied by negotiated SLAs and consistently excellent 24/7 customer service.

MTN says the partnership reaffirms its commitment to enable and inspire the growth of its enterprise customers across Africa and the rest of the world, as well as furthers its ambition to be the ICT partner of choice for customers looking to expand geographically.

“This partnership will provide great benefits to our customers. We will be able to leverage each other’s products and services to improve our offerings to carrier and enterprise customers in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In addition, we have the opportunity to offer our customers services beyond our footprint, thanks to the combined footprints of both companies, as well as those of our partners. Furthermore, this partnership reinforces our extensive service offerings in country and internationally,” says Elia Tsouros, MTN’s Enterprise Business Unit Head of Global Sales.

Liquid Telecom’s fibre network spans 20 000km across Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe and is complemented by its award-winning satellite service for rural areas.

While MTN boasts an extensive connectivity footprint, with points of presence for its Global MPLS network in 22 countries, including South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Djibouti, UK, Netherlands, Nigeria, Cameroon, Zambia, Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Cyprus, Benin, Guinea Conakry, Congo Brazzaville, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Botswana.

Together, Liquid Telecom and MTN will be able to provision networks with complex requirements faster and sell each other’s wholesale, carrier, enterprise and fixed services on the combined network – providing more choice to businesses of all sizes, competitively.

“We have a well-deserved reputation in East, Central and Southern Africa, for providing quality broadband to businesses. We are laying 100km of new fibre every week but have decided to partner for the time being in West Africa so that we can immediately meet demand from businesses there,” says Nic Rudnick, CEO of The Liquid Telecom Group.

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