Kathy Gibson reports – Liquid Telecom has done a complete rip-and-replace of its network, today unveiling new transmission, core and access structures.
Reshaad Sha, CEO of Liquid Telecom, says the company can now deliver 10-times more connectivity across its customer base, with additional vertical services as well.
“This platform allows Liquid to grow with its customer base as they migrate to the cloud, and thus become more reliant than ever on the connectivity and availability of the networks,” he says.
“We have worked to having an always-available network for our customer base.”
He explains that the thinking behind the massive network upgrade was rooted in the need to transition the Liquid Telecom business to evolve its customer experience.
“The transition we wanted to undertake required – in our initial view – a significant shift. We couldn’t just do a network upgrade, so we decided to replace the entire network: the transmission layer, the core and the access layer – all the components that make up the active network.”
The passive layer, consisting of the fibre in the ground, hasn’t been replaced.
“The journey we have started to go on with our customers, of digitalisation, is about them bringing efficiencies into their environments. In a tough economy, you need to optimise the way to deliver value to customers and shareholders.
“Those journeys our customers are facing need a partner in connectivity and cloud. We are a large cloud provider across Africa, so we are able to partner beyond connectivity, into the cloud and all the stuff inbetween.
“With this transition in mind, we had to undertake this significant replacement of the entire network.”
Broadband has to go beyond connectivity to provide services to a wide range of users, says Craig van Rooyen, chief operating officer of Liquid Telecom.
Importantly, the expansion of the Liquid Telecom network now allows uses in smaller towns along the main national routes can now access the network as well.
Van Rooyen explains that closing the ring around the country is non-exclusive and other service providers are able to use the extensive Liquid Telecom network.
“We see broadband as a main enabler going forward,” he says. “It also allows companies to extend their geographic presence around the country and the world.”
Improvements in the network help Liquid Telecom improve access to broadband, Van Rooyen says. “Also, by increasing capacity in the core we overcome lack of capacity.
“We have replaced equipment that has reached end of life to ensure that the services we offer are reliable and of the highest quality.”
Importantly, Liquid Telecom has also provided the power generation infrastructure to ensure the network stays up during loadshedding and reduce outages over time.
“When you improve the network its not just about the physical capacity, it is also about improving processes within Liquid Telecom,” he adds.
“I think we have gone a long way towards customer centricity and improving customer processes.”
Liquid Telecom is also working on its own digitalisation, with a proactive approach to being predictive about faults and reducing the time to repair services.
“We have also gone a long way to improving time to install with the new network through processes and investing in the network.”
Liquid Telecom is also building over the top (OTT) services.
The software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) is vital for the provision of networking services, says Willie Oosthuizen, head of strategy at Liquid Telecom.
“It’s not about replacing the network, but adding a lot of intelligence,” he explains. “SDN is a service-centric solution.”
SD-WAN allows for a number of innovative ways to connect services to customers, he adds. “And you can start mixing and matching so there is a lot more flexibility than in the past.”
The modernised underlay provided by the new network allows Liquid Telecom to provide a richer set if services, better security and clear policies.
Using SD-WAN, it is now easier to connect multi-cloud environment, says Oosthuizen. “It is easy to connect, and it is all defined in the software according to defined policies.
He points out that SD-WAN is a mature technology now, and a number of industrialised services are now available, and it will soon be available as a complete managed service.