PARIS -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is opening up Africa’s most populous nation to the benefits of ultra-broadband connectivity by launching a superfast, 100 gigabit-per-second fiber-optic network with MTN Nigeria, a subsidiary of Dubai-based MTN Group and the leading service provider in Africa.

MTN Nigeria, which covers more than almost 90 percent of Nigeria’s land mass, will deploy a 100G network that re-uses existing 10G optical assets thereby preserving MTN past investments while ensuring future proof and state of art solution.

Nigeria’s growing economy is fueling a proliferation of mobile subscribers, which number about 275 to every one landline in the country. As a result, Nigeria has a significant need for reliable, mobile broadband access to support growing demand for bandwidth hungry services such as streaming video plus the ever-increasing need from enterprises for storage and data center connections. The new network also gives MTN the capacity and flexibility to offer wholesale services to other service providers in the region.

Alcatel-Lucent Agile Optical Networking combines WDM, OTN, and GMPLS/ASON control plane intelligence to assure scalable, versatile, reliable and efficient transport at 100G and beyond.

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU)