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   PARIS--(Business Wire)--Liquid Telecom, the leading wholesale carrier in Africa, has chosen Ekinops, aleading supplier of next generation optical transport equipment, for its newlong-haul DWDM network across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The networkfeatures the longest uninterrupted fiber spans in the continent. Liquid`s new optical network spans more than 2,500 km and was built toaccommodate the growing demand for bandwidth in the region as well as the needfor an ultra-long-haul transmission network. This expansion of Liquid`sPan-African network will help bring the Internet to areas starving for reliable,high-speed access. The new network carries multiple 10G wavelengths and can scale to support manymore 10G and 100G services. Liquid Telecom has built Africa`s largest fiber network, which runs from thenorth of Uganda to Cape Town. In total, its award-winning Pan-African fibernetwork spans more than 13,000 km across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia,Zimbabwe, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, and South Africa. Liquid`s fiber network isthe first to cross country borders and covers Africa`s fastest-growingeconomies, where no fixed network has existed before. Liquid Telecom and Ekinops have been awarded at this year`s Global TelecomsBusiness Innovation awards the "Best Fixed Network Innovation" for their jointwork in this project for building Africa`s longest single span fiber links. Theyhave successfully deployed spans that cover more than 310 km without inlineamplifiers. Typical long-haul optical networks require an amplifier site every 100 km inorder to amplify the signal. In rural Africa, with its wide open spaces, wherethe distance between towns can be more than 400 km, this is a major challenge.The costs of building an amplifier site every 100 km - including the powergenerator, site security, and roads to access the site - are enormous. This was the main challenge for Liquid Telecom and one of the key reasons itchose Ekinops, a company that specialize in long spans thanks to its DynaFECdynamic forward error correction technology. With normal spans, the network would have required 16 amplification sites butthanks to the long spans, Liquid Telecom was able to reduce the number of spansto five. Nic Rudnick, CEO of Liquid Telecom, said, "Congratulations to everyone whoworked on this project, which has set the standard for the industry. We chooseto build and own our fiber networks in Africa wherever possible, and we trustEkinops to help us cross the massive distances found in this continent." "Liquid Telecom is the leading wholesale provider in Africa," said JonathanAmir, Ekinops` vice president of sales in EMEA. "With our long haul technologywe helped Liquid expand their optical network cost-effectively and overcomegeographical challenges. Their network will enable millions of new people toconnect to the Internet and we are very proud they chose us as their partner." About Liquid TelecomLiquid Telecom supplies wholesale fibre optic, satellite and connectivityservices in Africa. Its customers include Africa`s largest mobile networkoperators, ISPs, financial institutions and businesses of all sizes in Eastern,Central and Southern Africa. Liquid has built Africa`s largest single fibrenetwork which runs from the north of Uganda to Cape Town on a single thread. Intotal, its award-winning Pan-African fibre network spans over 13,000 km acrossKenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho and SouthAfrica. It is the first fibre network to cross country borders and coversAfrica`s fastest-growing economies where no fixed network has existed before.Liquid`s wholesale network provides connectivity onto the five main subsea cablesystems landing in Africa; WACS, EASSY, SEACOM, SAT3 and TEAMs. Working undervarious brands, the Liquid Telecom Group has operating entities in Botswana,DRC, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, UK, Zambia andZimbabwe. The Liquid Telecom Group is a subsidiary of the Econet Wireless Group.About EkinopsEkinops is a leading supplier of next generation optical transport equipment fortelecommunications service providers. The Ekinops 360 addresses Metro, Regional,and Long-Haul applications with a single, highly-integrated platform. Ekinops isa market-leading innovator in 100G transport with its unique all-in-1RUapproach that truly optimizes optical networks. The Ekinops 360 system relies onthe highly-programmable Ekinops T-Chip (Transport-on-a-Chip) that enables fast,flexible and cost-effective delivery of new services for high-speed transport.Using the Ekinops 360 carrier-grade system, operators can simply increasecapacity of their networks - CWDM, DWDM, Ethernet, ESCON, Fibre Channel,SONET/SDH, and uncompressed video (HD-SDI, SD-SDI, ASI). Ekinops isheadquartered in Lannion, France, and Ekinops Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary,is incorporated in the USA. For more information, visit Ekinops at
  www.ekinops.net.
   EkinopsDominique Arestan, +33 (0)1 49 97 04 03Marketing Communications DirectorMobile: +33 (0)6 42 10 95 05darestan@ekinops.netCopyright Business Wire 2013