Huawei has announced the roll out of new solutions aimed at the internet sector in South Africa and Kenya with the objective to boost internet penetration.

In South Africa, the multinational ICT company plans to extend its offer of cloud-based internet solutions, already available for telecommunications companies, to enterprise customers.

The solutions are based on a strategy that seeks to migrate all layers of the company's ICT solutions, including those targeting ISPs and other internet businesses, onto a cloud-based ecosystem.

This will be presented during the annual iWeek internet industry conference hosted in Durban this week.

In Kenya, the company has revealed that it is working with Safaricom to deploy a Fibre to the Home (FTTH) network.

ChangLian Zhao, Senior Solutions Director of the Enterprise Business Group at Huawei says a focus on cloud technology is one of the best ways for the ICT industry to getting more people connected to the internet, while catering for more sophisticated use of the resource.

"The industry trends have changed as use of the cloud increases and people use the internet for access video and other large traffic. If you want more people to connect to the internet you must allow for more traffic and give more homes the option of connecting to fibre. We needed to make sure that we provide the newest and latest technology to ISPs."

Huawei believes that a cloud ecosystem that provides solutions for more storage and security at a lower cost for enterprises, and empowers all stakeholders in the internet sector to leverage the digital transformation through 'cloudification', is an important step in the effort to increase internet penetration in South Africa and the rest of the continent.

End-to-end requirements

In Kenya, Huawei says while the country has a steadily developing economy, its fixed broadband penetration rate is lower than 1% which means that the local network requirements are not being met.

This has served as the basis for a new partnership with Safaricom, which has now adopted Huawei's end-to-end (E2E) FTTH solution for rapid deployment of the FTTH network and expansion of its capability to new home broadband services.

Jeff Wang, President of Huawei's Access Network Product Line says emerging markets place strong demands on FTTH network services.

"The top challenge that operators face is shortening the ROI period. To solve this challenge, Huawei released the E2E FTTH solution. It features precise investment, fast network construction, quick service provisioning, and efficient O&M, enabling operators to greatly shorten the ROI period and achieve business success."

Thibuad Rerolle, Director for Technology at Safaricom says the mobile operator's growth plans into the home and enterprise fixed broadband market will benefit from E2E FTTH solution.

"By using Huawei's E2E FTTH solution, we can quickly build the FTTH network. We are keen to broaden the development space for new fixed broadband services."