Safaricom, on Wednesday, announced the deployment of a 400G network link, making its network among the first in the world to commercially deploy the solution.
The new 400G link will enable the company to support increasing video consumption alongside demand for higher video quality from both its home and mobile customers. Safaricom can also better support the emergence of smart homes which sees appliances connected to the internet to provide users with the ability to continually monitor and control them both at home and remotely.
“The 400G solution will support the continued growth of our network which is being driven by an explosion in internet usage. Mobile data usage on our network has been doubling year-on-year while our fibre network now reaches more than 220,000 homes and 17,000 businesses across more than ten towns. It was, therefore, prudent to invest in the latest network technology to ensure that we can support the demand from our customers for years to come,” stated Thibaud Rerolle, Safaricom’s Chief Technology Officer.
Supported by Huawei, the high capacity link will quadruple the company’s capacity to carry internet traffic over 500 kilometers. The link will achieve a speed of up to 400 Gigabits per second, an upgrade from the previous connection which offered speeds of 100 Gbps.
Safaricom and Huawei announced deployment of the solution at the ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain. MWC Barcelona is the largest mobile event in the world, bringing together the latest innovations and leading-edge technology from more than 2,400 firms.
In the two years to September 2018, Safaricom experienced a four-fold growth in average data usage per customer which went from 160 Megabytes per customer per month to 640 Megabytes per customer per month.
Safaricom also saw its 4G coverage grow to more than 2,600 sites providing coverage to more than 53 per cent of the country’s population while its 3G coverage now offers high-speed broadband to more than 91 per cent of the population.
To accommodate its growing network coverage, Safaricom has also laid more than 5,500 kilometres of fibre linking its masts in more than 16 major towns.
The 400G standard was approved in December 2017 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, paving the way for network equipment suppliers and operators to begin deploying equipment that officially conforms to the standard.
This has been in line with the rapid development experienced in technology since the information age kicked in in 1970s
Time flies and periods change. It is therefore paramount that businesses and the people managing them learn to keep up.
Ever since the globe exited the world war age and ushered in the information age, people have been ecstatic about rapid development.
From the ‘70s when the first computer was discovered to today’s rampancy in instant telephone communication across continents, people have built and thrived businesses on the platform.
It seems the development of the information age set up individuals to their very best in terms of invention, innovation and general growth.
However, with the growth came the sophistication of cyber attacks with mutations strong enough to bring down even the hardest of conglomerates.
Several revolutionary developers have attested to the nuisance of the attackers impeding their steady growth and dream to empower the communities in which they exist.
Big companies have lost proprietary data as a result of cyber attacks and had to navigate the harsh world of managing a digital company with the information age presenting them with more problems than they bargained for.
But not anymore.
A new global cybersecurity Report from Vodafone highlights that the more cyber-ready a business becomes, the better its overall business outcomes.
According to the study, 48% of cyber-ready businesses have posted a 5% growth annually.
What is, however, worrying is that 66% of businesses worldwide cannot authoritatively call themselves cyber-ready which puts them at the risk of losing everything.
It is with this mindset that Safaricom developed a service to protect enterprise customers from more unnecessary losses arising from a perennial problem that can be avoided.
The service dubbed EBU enables companies, enterprises, and individuals secure their emails and websites while managing vulnerabilities, test and audit of I.T systems among various other services.
Customers’ information technology is protected through managed security solutions, security assurance and advisory services.
According to Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore, the service has kicked off and several industry players, especially from financial services and transport sectors, have signed on.
“We realise that all customers have unique needs and different budget levels. Our I.T. cybersecurity solutions are designed to cater for each customer’s needs so that they can get the best value and strategically select their solutions,” divulged Mr Collymore.
It may be time you step up before it’s too late.
