NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 28 – AccessKenya Group is partnering with ECI Telecom Inc. in the Group’s new metropolitan fibre network.
The partnership worth $1.9 million for phase 1 of the fibre network rollout will connect about 250 buildings around Nairobi on a fibre network of about 150 kilometres.
Civil works for the fibre network already started in January 2009 and is well underway to meet the timeline of coinciding with the landing of the international submarine fibre network.
Making the announcement, AccessKenya Group’s Managing Director, Jonathan Somen said: “There were very many compelling reasons to choose ECI for our metro fibre network. Having looked at all the vendors, we felt that the complete package on the table from ECI was the most compelling.”
“We believe the back office of the ECI solution will help us to run the most efficient and the most responsive network in Kenya to allow us to react faster to our customers needs than any of our competitors as well as a very easy to manage Network Management System to overseeing the network,” he added.
“In addition, part of the brief to ECI has been to integrate our two existing wireless networks into the fibre. This will allow us to backhaul our wireless traffic across the fibre where possible and will also allow us to provide our clients with seamless connections to multiple sites across our entire infrastructure.”
Mr Somen also said that as part of ECIs commitment to this project as their partner, they will be supplying an engineer for two months to ensure all services operate properly at the beginning and this is significant value for AccessKenya and their clients.
Vice President of ECI, Itzhak Ronen, said that ECI is excited to work with AccessKenya due to their impressive expertise as well as their position in the market.
“As an international company working all over the world, we are very impressed with the expertise of the AccessKenya team and the thoroughness with which they approached this project. They are an excellent fit for us as a partner as a market leader and an innovator and we are very excited to work with them to further strengthen their position in the Kenya market,” said Mr Ronen.
Presently, AccessKenya is on the final leg of laying the physical infrastructure for its metropolitan fibre network, the largest IP based fibre network in Kenya.
Upon completion, the network will cover approximately 130 kilometres including 250 buildings across Nairobi including the major commercial areas of the Central Business District, Upper Hill and Westlands as well as connecting Mombasa Road to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, to Dagoretti Corner and Lavington and covering out to Gigiri.
Being a key shareholder in TEAMS, AccessKenya is also in the final stages of purchasing large amounts of capacity on SEACOM to cement its international network redundancy as well as opening up new revenue streams.
“From June 2009, AccessKenya will be able to offer wholesale bandwidth to other operators as well as corporate customers. With a consolidated network done by ECI, we will be best placed to deliver reliable and cost effective services,” concluded Mr Somen.
Israel-based ECI Telecom is a leading global supplier of networking infrastructure for carrier and service provider networks. From tier-one national network operators to city carriers, ECI\’s equipment serves as the platform for key applications such as business services, voice, video and wireless backhaul.
