Founded in 1994, MTN began its cross-border development in 1997, when it purchased operating licenses in Uganda and Swaziland in 1998, Cameroon's state-owned operator CAMTEL-MOBILES in 2000, and one of the four mobile licenses in Nigeria in 2001. After a few years of operation, MTN gained great development, and in 2005, MTN purchased four more licenses in Côte d'Ivoire, Zambia, Botswana and Congo Brazzaville. This was the first time that MTN obtained licenses to operate in countries outside of Africa, and in 2006, MTN acquired INVESTCOM, a multinational operator headquartered in Lebanon, bringing the number of licenses to 23, with the addition of licenses for Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Ghana, Benin, Afghanistan and Cyprus, and the total number of subscribers has grown to nearly 45 million.

After several years of rapid growth, MTN Rwanda has leapfrogged to become the largest mobile operator in Rwanda today, offering a wide range of services such as GSM mobile communications, broadband access, and wireless Internet access.

Building a transmission bearer network for MTN's successful transformation

Previously, MTN Rwanda's transmission network was dominated by microwave transmission. As Rwanda is a hilly country, the quality of microwave transmission network is unstable and there are a large number of transmission coverage blind zones, which seriously restricts the construction and coverage of MTN Rwanda's GSM network, and also affects the increasing expansion of data services and broadband access and other services, which ultimately affects the increase in the number of subscribers and hampers the growth of operating profits. To achieve rapid subscriber expansion, MTN decided to transform itself into a multi-service provider. Its first task was to improve the existing transmission bearer network and build an information superhighway using fiber optic transmission network.

Ultra-high-capacity transmission network to enhance market competitiveness

With the rapid growth of subscribers and the expansion of broadband access market, MTN Rwanda needs to adapt to the explosive growth of data services and quickly build a network and improve network coverage, the transmission network bandwidth bottleneck has become a problem that must be solved as soon as possible.

ZTE carefully built a comprehensive solution for the national backbone transmission network and the capital city transmission network for MTN Rwanda. The solution demonstrates the advantages of ultra-large transmission bandwidth, perfect network protection, and fast and smooth upgrading and expansion of the fiber optic network, which can provide users with various service experiences including voice and high-speed data services, and greatly enhance the market competitiveness of MTN Rwanda.

NG-SDH Equipment to Reduce TCO

The project adopts ZTE's NG-SDH equipment, which has flexible multi-service access functions and supports a variety of value-added services, thus enhancing the profitability of Rwanda's MTN network; NG-SDH equipment's excellent scalability and on-demand smooth upgrading capability, which strongly reduces the MTN CAPEX; and NG-SDH equipment's powerful network scheduling function, which improves the network operation capability and reduces the MTN's TCO. At the same time, ZTE Corporation adopts a variety of measures to ensure service security, provides a highly reliable service bearing platform, and the powerful data characteristics of NG-SDH equipment can fully meet the rapid service growth demand of MTN.

The new-generation NG-SDH equipment adopted by ZTE Corporation realizes high-speed bandwidth, perfect network protection, and smooth network upgrading, which greatly reduces TCO and assists MTNs in improving market competitiveness.

Optical Cable Pipeline Laying to Reduce OPEX

In transmission network construction, ZTE adopts the pipe laying method for fiber optic cable construction, which not only completes the perfect protection of fiber optic cables, but also increases the laying in the existing redundant pipe holes in the future expansion of fiber optic cables, without the need for another large investment in civil engineering, thus saving the investment in network expansion in the future, and helping MTNs to reduce OPEX.

Rapid Engineering Delivery Capability to Accelerate Market Expansion Demand

Despite the large number of complex external wiring projects, ZTE completed the entire optical transmission network and put it into commercial use in just six months. ZTE's fast engineering delivery capability has built a high-speed optical transmission network for MTN in Rwanda in a short period of time, accelerating the pace of MTN market expansion.

The Rwanda MTN national backbone and capital metropolitan area network project demonstrates ZTE's foresight and rationality of comprehensive optical transmission solutions and its rapid delivery capability in engineering construction management.

Cooperation History

1. In 2006, MTN Rwanda started full cooperation with ZTE Corporation, introducing ZTE's NG-SDH optical transmission equipment to replace the original microwave transmission method, taking the first step toward realizing nationwide optical network coverage;

In 2008, MTN Rwanda cooperated with ZTE to build the capital's fiber optic access network for large customer access, using ZTE's high-end optical network products to realize high-speed bearer for large customer access.