Recently, telecom equipment provider Ericsson (News - Alert) inked a deal with MTN Nigeria, a telecom operator in Africa, in order to deploy a new wireless packet core network technology.

This deal also includes using an end-to-end Quality of Service solution that will power more innovative mobile broadband products.

Thanks to Ericsson’s Smart Services Router (SSR) 8020 wireless packet core network technology platform, the telecom provider is now able to offer newer, smarter functions and capabilities to enhance the mobile broadband experience for end-users.

Boasting a backplane capacity of up to 16 Tbps, state-of-the-art signaling capacities, an easy-to-use administrative interface, and sophisticated availability and resilience capabilities, the SSR platform will support the current 2G, 3G, and Wi-Fi networks of MTN Nigeria. The Evolved Packet Gateway (EPG) application will also support future upgrades to LTE (News - Alert).

"The flexibility and capacity of the SSR platform will allow MTN Nigeria to introduce newer, smarter functions and capabilities which will enhance the mobile broadband experience for end users," said Lars Lindén, head of Ericsson Sub-Saharan Africa, in a statement.

The service will help the African operator to tap one of the fastest growing telecom platform deployment markets in the world. Estimates show data traffic growth in Nigeria was 100 percent last year and the demand for mobile broadband is not slowing down as Internet services are becoming increasingly essential for more and more facets of people's lives.   

With its ability to support different types of access networks, Ericsson’s Smart Services Router (SSR) 8020 platform brings significant cost savings to operators because fewer nodes with high scalability can efficiently handle the network bandwidth growth.

The telecom platform deployment solution also provides the telecom operator with traffic management capabilities for quality of service differentiation and improved operator billing and rating options.

"Deploying this platform will make our network more efficient and scalable to cater for the growing data demands of our subscribers," added Lynda Saint-Nwafor, CTO of MTN (News - Alert) Nigeria.

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