Developing Telecoms
Thursday June 22, 2023
Somali service provider Somtel is deploying the DZS Saber compact and environmentally hardened coherent optics solutions to future-proof its dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) backbone network for reliable, cost-effective delivery of high-bandwidth aggregation and transport services.
Based in Hargeisa, Somaliland and a subsidiary of Dahabshiil, a global finance organization, Somtel offers a network spanning numerous cities across the Somali region and passing all network traffic types — mobile and fixed, consumer and enterprise. DZS specialises in access, optical and cloud-controlled software-defined solutions.
Somtel’s middle-mile fibre network uses point-to-point DWDM to backhaul all of its telecommunications traffic from various citywide aggregation points to the core in Mogadishu, Somalia.
Somtel is among the first service providers in Africa to deploy the new DZS Saber 4400 platform, a first-of-its-kind hardened, modular, coherent optical metro and edge transport solution, that delivers up to 400 Gbps per wavelength and supports the industry’s smallest form factor multi-degree CDC Flex-Grid ROADM capability.
Somtel approached DZS because its hardened coherent optics systems have proven to be reliable in extreme dusty and hot conditions for Somtel’s partner Somaliland Cable over several years.
“Additionally,” says Abdirashid Duale, Group CEO, Dahabshiil, “as we add more sites, move to 5G, and begin deploying fibre to the home (FTTH) and other advanced services, DZS provides us with compact and scalable solutions today that we can easily expand in place to handle terabits per second of transport capacity at a fraction of the cost of traditional data centre-optimized transport systems.”
With the DZS Saber 4400 now part of its plans, DZS says that Somtel will have the flexibility to add CDC Flex-Grid ROADM functionality as modules in its transport solutions, providing it with significantly enhanced opportunities to add new services and monetize its network.