Driving the migration from TDM to IP in West Africa

ICN is using Orchid One as the foundation for its migration from TDM to IP as Nigeria prepares for a 4G future

Interconnect Clearinghouse Nigeria (ICN) serves Africa’s largest telecommunications market as a clearing house delivering interconnect services to mobile, fixed line and Value Added service providers and is in the process of migrating its network from TDM to IP. Fixed line and mobile customers across Nigeria are increasingly adopting IP communications services and ICN’s service provider customers have been challenged to deliver next-generation infrastructure seamlessly.

Since the first GSM licenses were issued in 2001, Nigeria has become one of the fastest growing communications markets in the world with over 130 million mobile subscribers. It is within the top 10 largest mobile markets by subscribers with intense domestic competition.

While ICN’s customers are gradually making the move to IP and preparing for the widespread launch of LTE in the country, it sees an opportunity to be at the forefront of enabling IP interconnect services in Nigeria. In a country where mobile is such a critical communications tool, LTE will place significant demand on backhaul infrastructure to support high-performance applications and deliver on customer expectations for quality of service (QoS) and quality of Experience (QoE).

To prepare for the future and ensure it is positioned to serve growing traffic demand, ICN deployed Cataleya’s Orchid One Network Session and Application Manager. With Orchid One in place, ICN is ready with intelligent network infrastructure as well as the ability to offer partitioning capabilities to offer hosted services to its service provider customers.