Liquid telecom scoops second award

Published: 28 November 2013

For the second year running, Liquid Telecom has been named Best African Wholesale Carrier at the annual Global Carrier Awards, beating off strong competition from WIOCC, Orange and PCCW Global.Organised by Capacity magazine and now in its eighth year, the Global Carrier Awards have become the biggest and most prestigious awards event of the wholesale telecoms calendar.

In the judges' view, "Liquid Telecom has again shown great promise and ambitious plans for development in Africa. It has aggressively targeted expansion of its fibre footprint in the continent and is attempting to access a range of countries where infrastructure maintenance remains the most challenging in the world."

Judges noted Liquid Telecom's M&A strategy as a particular highlight - with the company acquiring four companies in 2013 - alongside its commitment to serving the region's communications sector, by diverting traffic as a result of multiple cable sea cuts to enable redundancy on a number of routes from Africa to Egypt and Europe.

Nic Rudnick, Liquid Telecom's CEO, said "At Liquid Telecom we celebrate the people who make it happen. This award is a real team effort and recognises our company's drive and ambition to provide internet connectivity across the whole of Africa."

This is the second week in a row that Liquid Telecom has been recognised by the industry. At last week's AfricaCom awards it picked up an award for Best Connectivity Solution in Africa for building the longest fibre links in Africa.

Liquid Telecom supplies wholesale fibre optic, satellite and connectivity services in Africa. Its customers include Africa's largest mobile network operators, ISPs, financial institutions and businesses of all sizes in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa.Liquid Telecom has built Africa's largest single fibre network which runs from the north of Uganda to Cape Town on a single thread. In total, its award-winning Pan-African fibre network spans more than 17 000km across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho and South Africa. It is the first fibre network to cross country borders and covers 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.

Working under various brands, the Liquid Telecom Group has operating entities in Botswana, DRC, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, UK, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Accepting the Africa Com award on behalf of Liquid, Wellington Makamure, the managing director for Liquid Telecom Zimbabwe stated the award is a reflection of all the hard work that the group is working on to provide connectivity in and across country boundaries in Africa.

- fingaz