CUSTOMER SUCCESS
PARTNERSHIP
monitoring and reporting platform that consolidates
“Juniper is a strategic partner for Airtel, and if there were any network outage, the impact on voice and data services would be huge. This makes NEC XON’s support absolutely business- critical.”
across vendor network automation solutions. “Anuta ATOM delivers stateful service provisioning and workflow management for stateless services, along with configuration compliance and
LOW-COST peering infrastructure from TeraCo, TIP and NEC XON
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“Juniper is a strategic partner for Airtel, and if there were any network outage, the impact on voice and data services would be huge,” said Willys Wendoh, Regional Lead Product Management at NEC XON “This makes NEC XON’s support absolutely business-critical.” The MBPN upgrade was divided into two phases, a $1m first phase awarded in April 2022 and a $2m second phase awarded in mid-2022. The core network capacity upgrade is enabling Airtel to accommodate new routing technologies, such as seamless MPLS (multiprotocol label switching), and modernise its data centre. This makes network growth possible by means of new architecture and platform options driven by traffic and service demands. The solution includes Juniper routing, switching and security platforms namely MX routers, QFX switches and SRX firewalls in the data centre.
device life-cycle management,” Wendoh explained.
N EC XON has been entrusted based Mobile Packet Backbone Network (MPBN) core upgrade in Kenya. Airtel is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company that provides services throughout Africa. with Airtel’s Juniper Networks- The project involves a capacity upgrade and re-design of Airtel’s MBPN network to be ready to grow on demand. Airtel was using a mix of old/ EOS Juniper equipment and Extreme Networks switches which were being replaced with Juniper MX Routers and QXF Switches. Willys Wendoh, Regional Lead: Product Management at NEC XON
NEC XON beat multiple international suppliers to the Airtel work. Airtel’s strategic relationship with Juniper meant NEC XON benefitted greatly from Juniper’s recommendation.
Airtel also liked NEC’s global footprint and reputation.
“We’re building a network model that simulates traffic growth,” Wendoh said. “The model enables us to recommend changes to the architecture to accommodate projected growth, and identify scaling issues and potential areas of failure. From this model, you can capture network transport costs that outline equipment and CapEx overhead for the entire network extrapolated for each year in the evolutionary period. It also allows networks to bring revenue generating capabilities online faster for bigger productivity gains, greater market reach, and higher levels of customer satisfaction.”
flexibility to choose the hardware and software combinations that suit their requirements. It drastically lowers the cost of infrastructure and uses open, standards-based interfaces that still allow integration with existing network management systems. LOW INTERNET PENETRATION STIFLES AFRICAN GROWTH Anthony Laing, GM of Networking at NEC XON, said lower networking infrastructure costs can be passed on to consumers. “That means fast Internet access becomes available to a much wider user base – opening up unprecedented education and business opportunities in Africa.”
South African homes numbered just 1,796,360 as of 2021. That’s low for a country reported to have 17,947,000 households (also by Statista). “The technology disaggregates hardware and software and makes high-speed network and datacentre interconnectivity far more accessible and affordable,” said Laing. “The net results are faster, cheaper Internet access for the average user. Lowering barriers to access is vital for Africa where connectivity still isn’t pervasive, and cost is a bigger concern than in some parts of the world.” Michele McCann, Head of Interconnection and Peering, TeraCo, said: “The deployment of TIP’s 400G
T eraco, Africa’s leading carrier- neutral colocation provider, originally broke the high-cost Internet peering spell in South Africa with NAPAfrica. However, notwithstanding NAPAfrica’s low-cost peering, Teraco and its customers remained locked into high-cost proprietary hardware and software providers. Addressing the hardware and software cost issue, TeraCo recently announced the successful deployment of TIP Phoenix in its South African production network, with support from NEC XON. Provided by Facebook/ Meta-found Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Phoenix’s open architecture gives network operators the Anthony Laing, GM of Networking at NEC XON
The solution is also integrated with Anuta ATOM, a network orchestrating,
Airtel Kenya upgrades core Juniper network with NEC XON support
For example, according to Statista, fixed internet connections to
Phoenix solution marks a first in Africa. It greatly enhances TeraCo’s ability to deliver greater capacity and more reliable connectivity for customers, which is at the core of our mission. We would like to thank TIP and NEC for their contributions to this successful initiative.”
“The net results are faster, cheaper Internet access for the average user. Lowering barriers to access is vital for Africa where connectivity still isn’t pervasive, and cost is a bigger concern than in some parts of the world.”
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