The annual AfricaCom trade show opened its doors in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday morning, accompanied by a slew of news announcements (mostly regarding wireless deployments) from the likes of Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Alvarion Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR), Bluwan S.A. , Ceragon Networks Ltd. (Nasdaq: CRNT) and many more.
It's no surprise to find multiple network expansion investments, given the rate of mobile growth in the region: According to a new report issued by the GSM Association (GSMA) , sub-Saharan Africa is "the fastest-growing mobile market in the world," with an average annual growth rate of 44 percent since 2000. The region now has 475 million mobile connections, compared with 12.3 million fixed lines.
As a result of that growth, network operators are investing in their access, backhaul and transport infrastructure. Here's a snapshot of what's going on:
Togo Cellulaire is expanding its 2G, 3G and backhaul capacity with base station, microwave and router equipment from Alcatel-Lucent. The vendor is also supplying its 100Gbit/s optical gear to a consortium of Angolan network operators that is building a long-distance data transport link to the West African Cable System (WACS).
The blogs and comments are the opinions only of the writers and do not reflect the views of Light Reading. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
To save this item to your list of favorite Light Reading content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
