Connecting Africa is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 3099067.

Enterprise

Liquid Telecom Selects Metaswitch for Pan-African Voice and UC&C Service Expansion

Article Image
PRESS RELEASE -- LOS ALTOS, Calif. -- Cloud native communications software leader Metaswitch today announced that leading pan-African telecoms group Liquid Telecom, a subsidiary of Econet Global, has selected Metaswitch solutions, including its Clearwater vIMS Core, Perimeta vSBC, Service Assurance Server (SAS) and Multiservice Telephony Application Servers (MTAS) products as the basis of an extensive voice service expansion across six countries in Africa. The network will also support deployment of the Metaswitch Accession Communicator unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) application.

Liquid Telecom is a leading communications services and solutions provider across 13 countries in Eastern, central and Southern Africa that serves carrier, enterprise and retail customers with high-speed, reliable connectivity and digital services. It has built Africa’s largest independent fiber network, spanning over 50,000 km, and operates state-of-the-art data centers in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nairobi, with a combined 6,800 square meters of rack space. This is in addition to leading cloud-based services, such as Microsoft Office365 and Microsoft Azure and innovative digital content provision, including Netflix, NBA, TED and Kwese Play.

Liquid Telecom was compelled to add voice services due to the simplicity and flexibility enabled by the extensive Metaswitch virtual network functions (VNF) portfolio. “The Metaswitch solution will enable us to expand our business voice service footprint and portfolio rapidly by deploying a centralized network with regional hubs and much lighter networks in each country we serve,” said David Behr, Group Chief Product Officer, Liquid Telecom. “This significantly lowers both our capex and opex for services like SIP trunking and hosted UC and is backed by Metaswitch’s superior professional services and support organizations. Metaswitch has been a true partner to us throughout.”

Elements of the solution include Metaswitch Clearwater, a cloud-native virtual IMS core; Perimeta, a virtualized SBC that distributes signaling and media functionality across commodity hardware in the cloud and Accession, a powerful hosted UC&C suite that enables carriers to extend their business telephony services to any end device. It also includes Metaswitch Service Assurance Server and MetaView Analytics, advanced software that provides deep network insight to enhance the quality-of-experience and reduce time to repair and Multiservice Telephony Application Servers (MTAS), featuring fully-virtualized Class 4 and Class 5 switching designed to support a broad array of voice and video applications.

“Agile providers like Liquid often out-innovate global incumbents, driven as they are to push the edge of network and service velocity using network functions virtualization,” said Martin Lund, CEO of Metaswitch. “We look forward to continuing to work closely with Liquid as its service area and voice service portfolio continue to expand.”

ENDS

Innovation hub

Story

Hot startup of the month: Nigeria's Tech Herfrica

Connecting Africa's hot startup is Nigeria's Tech Herfrica, a social impact organization that focuses on the digital and financial inclusion of women and girls in rural areas of Nigeria.

Story

Omdia View: February 2024

Highlights in February 2024 in the Middle East and Africa included 5G launches in Senegal and 5G trials in Egypt as well as Kenya's first 5G MVNO. Airtel also launched a new wholesale connectivity business while MTN and Huawei are planning a joint Innovation Technology Lab in South Africa – that and more in this month's Omdia View.

More Innovation hub

Latest video

More videos

Partner perspectives

All Partner Perspectives

Sponsored video

More videos

Industry announcements

More Industry announcements

Upcoming events

Africa Tech Festival 2024
November 11-14, 2024
Cape Town, South Africa
More Upcoming events

Africa Tech Perspectives

Story

Uber's Marjorie Saint-Lot on inclusion and sustainability in Africa

Uber's Country Manager for Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, Marjorie Saint-Lot, shares how the ride-hailing company is approaching public-private partnerships, environmentally friendly initiatives and gender inclusion in Africa.

Story

The 100 most influential African leaders in 2023

A new report from Africa Tech Festival and Connecting Africa puts a spotlight on the top 100 African leaders in the telecoms and technology sector in 2023.

Story

Deep dive into East Africa's tech startup ecosystem

New survey reveals a lack of access to investors, reliance on international VCs and global recession trends as the biggest barriers for East African tech startups to access funds.

More Africa Tech perspectives

Guest Perspectives

Story

Omdia View: February 2024

By Omdia Analysts

Highlights in February 2024 in the Middle East and Africa included 5G launches in Senegal and 5G trials in Egypt as well as Kenya's first 5G MVNO. Airtel also launched a new wholesale connectivity business while MTN and Huawei are planning a joint Innovation Technology Lab in South Africa – that and more in this month's Omdia View.

Story

Omdia View: January 2024

By Omdia Analysts

Highlights in January 2024 in the Middle East and Africa included a $200 million fintech deal between MTN and Mastercard as well as 5G network trials by Telecom Egypt – that and more in this month's Omdia View.

More Guest Perspectives

Like us on Facebook

Newsletter Sign Up


Sign Up
Tag id test-002