Interconnect, Others’ Switch Over 1Bn Minutes Traffic-WTL

World Telecom Labs (WTL) on Tuesday, announced that close to one point four billion (one thousand million) minutes have passed through its specialist 2nd generation VoIP switches deployed by five of Nigeria’s interconnect exchange carriers.

WTL disclosed this during the annual NigeriaCom telecoms conference and exhibition, when all five of the carriers will be presented with a trophy to mark this historic occasion.

Licensed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the carriers, Breeze Micro, Exchange, Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICN), Niconnx and Solid, were established to increase competition and transparency in the Nigerian telecom marketplace.

The four leading mobile operators in Nigeria are now all required to divert 10% of their inter-carrier voice and SMS traffic to one of these operators.

The five licensees started offering services at the end of last year initially acting as wholesale interconnect carriers for TDM voice traffic.

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that they are using WTL’s switches to transfer traffic between the four existing mobile networks.

WTL is also helping the operators with their billing systems and the optimisation of voice traffic to increase capacity and reduce costs.

Leigh Smith, managing director of WTL, said “What a triumph for the NCC. The benefits of introducing the new carriers are clear:  a huge amount of traffic is being taken off the infrastructure of the established carriers in Nigeria thereby freeing up capacity, increasing speeds and reducing latency. In addition, there is greater transparency and openness in the market.”

On his part, Jihad Jaafar, CTO of Breeze Micro, said “The billionth minute is a significant moment for both Breeze Micro and our interconnect exchange carrier colleagues.  WTL has been instrumental in our success.  Its team of experts continues to be generous in sharing their knowledge and experience which is benefiting both the telecoms market and indeed the people of Nigeria.”

WTL’s range of 2nd generation VoIP and hybrid VoIP/TDM switches have been specifically designed to replace the huge, expensive, maintenance-heavy switches that have traditionally been used to transfer VoIP traffic onto other networks. 

They are capable of handling 1000s of simultaneous calls.

WTL’s VOIP and TDM voice optimisation services and equipment are being used by a number of operators throughout Africa and the Middle East and have a number of advantages over traditional switches.

It shows they are VoIP ready – WTL specialises in VoIP switches and so the switches installed in Nigeria can be easily switched from traditional TDM to VoIP once the existing mobile operators are ready to use VoIP as a means of interconnecting.

Highly reliable even under very heavy traffic loads, WTL’s switches are also simple and easy to run so they don’t need a dedicated, full-time engineer (unlike traditional switching equipment).

Service and support – WTL offers constant support and consultancy to all five operators.

Small footprint –WTL’s switches are physically small occupying 0.5 racks compared to the multiple racks needed by traditional voice switching vendors. Smaller racks means less power and reduced OPEX.

WTL’s switches are also easy to scale. The five Nigerian licensees all plan to set up multiple POPs throughout Nigeria to enable local switching and so want to ensure that their CAPEX is kept low.

WTL is exhibiting at NigeriaCom in Lagos on September 16 and 17 2014 where Leigh Smith will be available for meetings.

World Telecom Labs is a Belgium-based company which has long been a leader in the provision of VoIP switches, Pre-Paid applications and signalling gateways for emerging carriers and telecom service operators.

WTL has an installed base of 100,000s of voice ports with service providers worldwide switching billions of minutes of VoIP traffic using WTL equipment.