...Best Backhaul Solution for Africa at the 5th annual AfricaCom Awards ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa. The AfricaCom Awards reward excellence in African telecoms, media and ICT. The Best Backhaul Solution for Africa Award recognizes a fiber, satellite or wireless solutions provider that significantly improved backhaul capacity with measurable improvements in quality and reliability of service in Africa.

Comtech EF Data was selected by the panel of judges for its role in supporting Bharti Airtel’s satellite-based network upgrade and service expansion across its operations in 16 African countries, which is one of the largest backhaul upgrade projects for the African continent. In order to enable sustainable and profitable service expansion and subscriber growth to rural areas and remote villages in Africa, Bharti Airtel needed to upgrade its satellite-based network infrastructure. Bharti Airtel selected the Comtech EF Data satellite mobile backhaul solution to transport and optimize voice and data communications and to facilitate significant growth planned for the region.

Comtech EF Data’s award-winning CDM-625 Advanced Satellite Modem with DoubleTalk® Carrier-in-Carrier® bandwidth compression and the CX-U Series by its subsidiary, Memotec, were selected by Bharti Airtel. DoubleTalk Carrier in Carrier, based on the patented “Adaptive Cancellation” technology, allows transmit and receive carriers of a duplex link to share the same transponder space. DoubleTalk Carrier in Carrier is complementary to all advances in modem technology, including advanced forward error correction and modulation techniques. This allows for its successful deployment in bandwidth-limited and power-limited scenarios, as well as reduction in earth station BUC/HPA power requirements.

The Memotec CX-U Series is a dedicated mobile backhaul platform delivering Radio Access Network (RAN) optimization, A/E voice trunk compression and TDM Pseudowire. Bharti Airtel deployed several CX-U models, which are now optimizing the RAN and significantly reducing the amount of backhaul bandwidth required to support mobile services over constrained links. The combination Comtech EF Data and Memotec mobile backhaul solution is deployed globally by the top mobile network operators.

By employing Comtech EF Data’s bandwidth optimization technologies, Bharti Airtel reduced overall satellite transponder consumption from 17 to 12, and successfully reduced network OPEX for some satellite links by as much as 50 percent. Additionally, Bharti Airtel increased coverage in rural areas and was able to offer services to end users with no degradation in quality.