Gateway Business Selects Cisco for MPLS Solution in Africa

Gateway Business, a Vodacom Group company and a supplier of African telecommunications services, has selected Cisco for its MPLS network in Nigeria and across sub-Saharan Africa.
 
Officials with Cisco said that by utilizing the company’s technology, Gateway Business is able to use MPLS at the core of its pan-African network and a blend of fiber, wireless or satellite at the access level.
 
Gateway Business is one of the largest independent providers of secure, high speed, reliable bandwidth services in Africa. Over 1,500 multi-national corporations rely on Gateway to deliver business critical information between head quarters and branch offices from simple voice solutions, to private MPLS virtual private networks (VPNs) and internet access.
 
In Nigeria, Gateway Business is deploying a national MPLS network, rolling out wireless broadband services across 36 different states in 2010 and 2011.
 
This agreement with Cisco will help Gateway to deploy a range of new services for customers in Nigeria, West Africa, and across the African continent.
 

 
"Gateway focuses on delivering an integrated end-user experience through high quality products and services to our customers throughout the sub-Saharan region”, said Paul Jaikaran, executive director (technology) Gateway Business, in a statement.
 
Jaikaran said that Cisco's leadership in IP solutions will enable the company to maintain this competitive advantage by delivering converged voice, video, and data services on a common infrastructure to both consumers and business.
 
He said that this is another key milestone for Gateway Business as the company continues to invest in and deploy world class terrestrial networks across Africa.
 
Company officials said that Cisco IOS MPLS technology solutions will enable Gateway Communications (News - Alert) to build a next-generation intelligent network that delivers a wide variety of advanced, value-added services over a single infrastructure.
 
According to company officials, this economical solution can be integrated seamlessly over any existing infrastructure, such as IP, Frame Relay, ATM, or Ethernet.
 
Subscribers with differing access links can be aggregated on an MPLS edge without changing their current environments, as MPLS is independent of access technologies.
 

MPLS, company officials said, fuses the intelligence of routing with the performance of switching and provides significant benefits to networks with a pure IP architecture as well as those with IP and ATM or a mix of other Layer 2 technologies.
 
Cisco officials said that MPLS technology is key to scalable virtual private networks (VPNs) and end-to-end quality of service (QoS), enabling efficient utilization of existing networks to meet future growth and rapid fault correction of link and node failure.
 
The technology also helps deliver highly scalable, differentiated end-to-end IP services with simpler configuration, management, and provisioning for both Internet providers and subscribers. A wide range of platforms support this solution, which is essential for both service provider and enterprise networks.
 
"Innovative service providers like Gateway are rapidly bridging the digital divide and establishing connected communities,” said Richard Edet, general manager, Cisco Nigeria.
 
Ede said that Gateway uniquely combines impressive global coverage with an unrivalled local presence and the Cisco powered MPLS network will help take its customer offering to the next level.