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Liquid Telecom running smoothly in southern Africa

Liquid Telecom has announced two initiatives aimed at broadband services in Zimbabwe – the country’s first direct fibre connection to the West African Cable System (WACS) and the rollout of an urban fibre network in the capital, Harare.

Liquid Telecom says it has built the largest fibre network in southern Africa, providing backhaul between most urban areas and last-mile connectivity in the main cities of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa. Liquid’s network is the first to cross country borders and covers some of the most challenging parts of the world, where no fixed network has existed before. It operates as a wholesale carrier in all five countries, as well as an operator in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The company has connected Zimbabwe to the high-capacity WACS, the submarine telecommunications pipe that extends from South Africa to London along Africa’s west coast.  The link has been commissioned to the WACS landing station near Cape Town providing Zimbabwe with an alternative route for international traffic.

Liquid Telecom is already providing connectivity onto the other three main subsea fibre
systems of Africa; EASSy, SEACOM and SAT3. It has also started building the first urban network in Zimbabwe, which is providing bandwidth speeds of up to 20 mbps in a number of urban centres.

Wellington Makamumre, managing director at Liquid Telecom, said: 'In Zimbabwe no other IAP has managed to achieve what Liquid Telecom has achieved in such a short space of time.  Most operators have opted to wait for us to construct the network and then use it for their backhaul purposes.  Liquid Telecom now has a blueprint to deploy urban fibre in other countries.'

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