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MTN Group and Liquid Telecom have struck a partnership that will see the two companies jointly offering customers access to the largest fixed and wireless footprint across the continent.The partnership will cover wholesale, carrier to carrier, high speed broadband, enterprise and fixed data services. This arrangement will enable the two telecoms giants an opportunity to 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’ve a well-deserved reputation in East, Central and Southern Africa, for providing quality broadband to businesses. We’re 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,” said Liquid Telecom Group chief executive Nic Rudnick.

Liquid Telecom managing director and group executive for Southern Africa Wellington Makamure said the partnership enables the company to offer high speed fibre network services.

“The partnership enables Liquid Telecom to offer businesses gigabit-speed services accompanied by negotiated Service Level Agreements.The additional countries, which Liquid Telecom will now have a presence in are Benin, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, 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,” said Makamure.

MTN said the partnership reaffirms its commitment 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’ll 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’ve 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,” said MTN enterprise business unit head of global sales Elia Tsouros. 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. Together, Liquid Telecom and MTN will be able to provide networks with complex requirements and sell each other’s wholesale, carrier, enterprise and fixed services on the combined network providing more choice to businesses of all sizes, competitively.