Starlink Boosts Traffic for Rural Nigerian Cell Sites 45 Percent  – AMN

Africa Mobile Networks (AMN) has said that it has connected more than 100 rural base stations in Nigeria to Starlink’s LEO satellite network, which has resulted in a 45% boost in traffic on those sites.

AMN and SpaceX signed a commercial deal in July 2023 under which Starlink would provide satellite backhaul connectivity for AMN’s remote base stations across Africa.

The first AMN base station in Nigeria was fitted with a Starlink terminal in April this year in the rural village of Yebu.

Since then, over 100 base stations in other villages have been connected to Starlink, and AMN said in a statement it expects to double that number before the end of the year.

AMN said that traffic has increased by approximately 45% across all sites using Starlink backhaul, and that some sites are processing more than 25,000 voice minutes per day.

AMN also partly credited the traffic boost at those sites to its software-defined AMN Radio Node (ARN) technology, which enables the base stations to support up to five simultaneous carriers in either 2G+3G or 2G+4G configurations.

The combination of software-defined ARNs and LEO satellite backhaul enables AMN to boost base station capacity remotely with no change to the existing hardware on the site, AMN said.