Huawei and Safaricom will be together to deploy a fiber to the home (FTTH) network Safaricom adopts Huawei’s end-to-end (E2E) FTTH solution in the deployment in order to expand its capability to new home broadband services.
Kenya has a steadily developing economy, but its fixed broadband penetration rate is lower than 1%, failing to meet the network requirements of home and enterprise users. As Safaricom still upholds its plan to enter the home broadband services, it faces many more challenges including scattered user distribution, high network construction costs and low early phase service provisioning rates and revenues.
Huawei will be a major player after Safaricom uses analytics to determine network roll out in line with customer demand as its first step, and thereafter deploy Huawei’s E2E FTTH solution to achieve efficient network construction and operation.
Engineering innovation
For fast network construction, through infrastructure synergy and engineering innovation, Safaricom can fully utilize existing metropolitan area network (MAN) optical cables and preferentially use aerial cables.
Through the synergy of fixed broadband optical distribution networks (ODNs) and mobile backhaul networks, Safaricom can deploy mini optical line terminals (OLTs) and wireless base stations in the same cabinet, realizing fast deployment and centralized home access, and greatly decreasing network construction costs.
Huawei’s lightweight mini operations support system (0SS) helps the telco company reduce the system integration period and complete deployment within three months, down from 18 months. Huawei also provides a smartphone App that integrates installation, maintenance, and operations, supporting on-site service provisioning and acceptance, shortening service provisioning period from two weeks to less than 48 hours, and doubling installation rates.
Jeff Wang, President of Huawei’s Access Network Product Line, said, “Emerging markets place strong demands on FTTH network services. The top challenge that operators face is shortening the ROI period. To solve this challenge, Huawei released the E2E FTTH solution. It features precise investment, fast network construction, quick service provisioning, and efficient O&M, enabling operators to greatly shorten the ROI period and achieve business success.”