MTN and Liquid Telecom partner to extend footprint and offering in Africa

Johannesburg - Customers of MTN Group and Liquid Telecom are set to benefit from a larger connectivity footprint across Africa. This follows an announcement today that the two companies have partnered to jointly offer customers access to the largest fixed and wireless footprint across the continent.

The partnership, which covers wholesale, carrier-to-carrier, high speed broadband, enterprise and fixed data services, enables MTN and Liquid Telecom access to each other's fixed and wireless networks in countries on the African continent, where one party may not currently have presence.

According to Liquid Telecom, the partnership is in response to the increasing demand from businesses across West Africa for the company's broadband service.

"We have a well-deserved reputation in East, Central and Southern Africa, for providing quality broadband to businesses. We are laying 100km of new fibre every week but have decided to partner for the time being in West Africa so that we can immediately meet demand from businesses there," says Nic Rudnick, CEO of The Liquid Telecom Group.

The partnership enables Liquid Telecom to offer businesses gigabit-speed services accompanied by negotiated SLAs and consistently excellent 24/7 customer service. The additional countries which Liquid Telecom will now have a presence in are Benin, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Republic, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan and Swaziland.

The agreement with Liquid Telecom gives MTN the ability to service its multinational enterprise customers in Burundi, DRC, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

MTN says the partnership reaffirms its commitment to enable and inspire the growth of its enterprise customers across Africa and the rest of the world, as well as furthers its ambition to be the ICT partner of choice for customers looking to expand geographically.

"This partnership will provide great benefits to our customers. We will be able to leverage each other's products and services to improve our offerings to carrier and enterprise customers in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In addition, we have the opportunity to offer our customers services beyond our footprint, thanks to the combined footprints of both companies, as well as those of our partners. Furthermore, this partnership reinforces our extensive service offerings in country and internationally," says Elia Tsouros, MTN's Enterprise Business Unit Head of Global Sales.

Liquid Telecom's fibre network spans 20 000km across Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe and is complemented by its award-winning satellite service for rural areas. While MTN boasts an extensive connectivity footprint, with points of presence for its Global MPLS network in 22 countries, including South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Djibouti, UK, Netherlands, Nigeria, Cameroon, Zambia, Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Cyprus, Benin, Guinea Conakry, Congo Brazzaville, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Botswana.

Together, Liquid Telecom and MTN will be able to provision networks with complex requirements faster and sell each other's wholesale, carrier, enterprise and fixed services on the combined network – providing more choice to businesses of all sizes, competitively.

About The Liquid Telecom Group

Liquid Telecom is the leading independent data, voice and IP provider in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. It supplies fibre optic, satellite and international carrier services to Africa's largest mobile network operators, ISPs, financial institutions and businesses of all sizes. Multi-award winning Liquid Telecom has built Africa's largest single fibre network, which runs from the north of Uganda to Cape Town, currently spanning over 20,000km across borders and covering Africa's fastest-growing economies where no fixed network has existed before. Liquid Telecom's network provides connectivity onto the five main subsea cable systems landing in Africa; WACS, EASSY, SEACOM, SAT3 and TEAMs. The company was named Best African Wholesale Carrier in 2012, 2013 and 2014 at the annual Global Carrier Awards.