Nigeria's Globacom Taps Alcatel-Lucent for Multimedia Services

By Johanne Torres

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Alcatel (News - Alert)-Lucent has inked a set of new deals with Nigeria-based Globacom—one of the country's national telecom operators, to deploy nationwide fixed and mobile networks, IP/MPLS and optical network systems. The new deals are reportedly worth $600 million.

 

Alcatel-Lucent's deployments for Globacom will be part of a project that will allow the operator to extend its network capacity by integrating technologies that will support the delivery of multimedia, converged services such as triple-play of voice, data and video.

 

Alcatel-Lucent agreed to expand Globacom's national mobile network capacity to reach 35 million subscribers by the end of 2007. Globacom's network currently reaches 12 million subscribers. This will be possible via the deployment of Alcatel-Lucent's multi-standard radio access, core network, and transmissions systems. With the support of Alcatel-Lucent, Globacom was reportedly the first Nigerian operator to offer GPRS data services, multimedia messaging services (MMS) as well as Blackberry services in the West African country.

 

"Alcatel-Lucent's unmatched product portfolio and extensive experience in turnkey end-to-end projects will enable us to meet the challenge of rapidly deploying advanced technology networks and gradually move to an all-IP world in order to offer our Nigerian customers the latest multimedia converged services," said Dr. Adenuga, chairman for Globacom. "Through the continuation of this cooperation, we are working toward our ultimate goal of becoming the number one operator in the continent."

 

Alcatel-Lucent will also install nearly 300,000 multiservice access lines covering 13 cities, and an integrated CRM system. Alcatel-Lucent’s fixed network will enable Globacom to offer voice, high-speed Internet access and broadband multimedia services such as video on demand, videoconferencing and broadcast video to its subscribers.

 

Globacom will migrate its data networks onto an IP/MPLS network. The new converged network will support broadband data services both for GPRS and 3G UMTS.

 

"This agreement further cements the outstanding cooperation we have established with Globacom since its inception," said Alcatel-Lucent's president of carrier activities Etienne Fouques in a statement. "Our long-standing collaboration in mobile is now being broadened to multimedia fixed services and IP-based backbones, delivering a network infrastructure that will help Globacom’s customers to enjoy the most advanced services."

 

Alcatel-Lucent also announced today that it confirmed that it will continue to develop MiViewTV capabilities as key components of its converged entertainment platforms used by Telefónica, despite reports of the company having chosen Microsoft (News - Alert), its main supplier for IPTV software.

 

Reports by online news source Light Reading surfaced yesterday saying that Alcatel-Lucent desisted to further work on the Imagenio platform, which was to be used by Lucent to build MiViewTV—the multimedia service.

 

It seems as if Alcatel-Lucent has arranged to go ahead with its IPTV (News - Alert) plans by just "blending everything in." The company will launch its services by converging its in-house systems including the MiViewTV—which came from the Telefónica agreement; the MiTV Mobile Solution—which it inherited from the Mobilitec acquisition; as well as Microsoft's solutions.