The Angolan operator, Movicel and Namibia’s Mobile Telecommunications Limited (MTC) have partnered with Huawei to provide commercial LTE services. The two companies will therefore be the first commercial LTE service providers in Africa. Huawei will be providing its IP microwave solution for the LTE backhaul networks of both Movicel and MTC.
Each operator will be provided with up to 2 Gb/s. The link supports a simplified clock synchronization and allows unified network management for optical transmission and wireless equipment.
Over 100 countries were using the company’s IP microwave solution by the end of 2011 with close to 300,000 microwave hops. Some of these operators include MTN, Etisalat, China Unicom, and Telefonica. In Nigeria, 4G Mobile and ZODAFONES deployed the first commercial TD-LTE network in West Africa and utilized Huawei’s IP microwave solution, RTN 900, for their LTE backhaul networks. Huawei’s solution also successfully empowered the LTE backhaul networks of top global operators, including O2 in Germany, T-Mobile in Austria, and the Saudi Telecom Company in Saudi Arabia. According to Dell’Oro, Huawei ranked second in the global microwave market as of Q1 2012.
