Safaricom announced yet another first with the deployment of a 400G network link, making its network among the first in the world to commercially deploy the solution.
Supported by Huawei, the high capacity link will quadruple the company’s capacity to carry internet traffic over 500 kilometres. 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.
The 400G network link will bring more than just a new level of speed to the network; they bring flexible deployment options for different sizes and workloads so you can build large-scale 100G and 400G fabrics without sacrificing cost efficiency. It will also enable the smart buffering for big data or storage and machine learning workloads with dynamic packet prioritization
According to Chief Technology Officer at Safaricom, Thibaud Rerolle, mobile data usage on the Safaricom network has been doubling year-on-year while their fibre network now reaches more than 220,000 homes and 17,000 businesses across more than ten towns.
The move to install the 400G network link is therefore prudent to invest in in the latest network technology to ensure that the network can support the demand from our customers for years to come.
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.
