Pine Networks collaborates with Africell to deploy a disaggregated IP backbone

Africell Sierra Leone offers comprehensive mobile coverage, including 2G, 3G and 4G throughout the entire country. Additionally, Africell provides high capacity FTTx to cater to the connectivity needs of businesses and residential areas in Freetown.

Due to the significant surge in traffic resulting from its extensive 4G coverage and in preparation for the introduction of 5G, it became crucial for Africell to deploy a robust and scalable IP backbone network for the backhauling of both mobile and fixed traffic.

Known for its innovative approach and early adoption of new technologies, Africell made the strategic decision to deploy its new backbone infrastructure using disaggregated routing solutions based on the IP Infusion OcNOS Network Operating System (NOS) and the Edgecore Networks AS5916-54XKS Whitebox switches.

Pine Networks successfully delivered this turnkey project to Africell. Throughout this strategic endeavor, Pine Networks collaborated closely with Africell, overseeing the project from the initial design phase to its final completion, covering:

• Network design

• Proof of concept

• Integration

• Migration

• Support.

Ali Abou Hamdan, Head of Transmission and IP at Africell Sierra Leone highlighted: ”We took the decision to use a disaggregated routing solution because it covered all of our requirements and provided the flexibility we need, all at a lower price point than traditional routing solutions.”

Main Challenges

 Africell needed a solution that covers the following critical requirements:

• Scalability to accommodate future traffic growth and the introduction of new services seamlessly.

• Millisecond convergence time in the event of link or node failures.

• Simple to operate and to maintain.

In addition to the above, the solution needed to take into consideration the following aspects, specific to Africell’s environment: the transmission layer is a mix of fiber and microwave with different capacities,  fiber cuts can be frequent and the stability of point-to-point microwave links can be impacted by heavy rain during the rainy season.

Solution

The network was designed using Segment Routing MPLS (SR-MPLS) therefore eliminating the need for explicit label distribution and  for LDP-IGP synchronization, which can be a potential source of complexity and stability issues in traditional MPLS networks. Furthermore, SR-MPLS provides traffic engineering capabilities and fast reroute in case of node or link failure. SR-MPLS also provides a flexible and versatile infrastructure that supports a wide range of services such as L3VPN and L2VPN need for mobile and fixed services provided by Africell.

Traffic was smoothly migrated from the legacy layer 2 network to the new IP backbone. As a result Africell benefited from: higher capacity, lower latency and improved resiliency.

Ali Bazzi, CTO of Africell Sierra Leone: “The Freetown IP backbone project is a strategic project for us that will enable us to expand our 4G coverage and introduce 5G. Pine Networks delivered this project on time and with a great level of expertise.”

Network Management

For visibility and performance monitoring, Africell Sierra Leone deployed Pine Networks PMO, network Performance Management and Observability platform. PMO is a vendor agnostic network management system purpose-built for disaggregated IP networks. PMO covers multiple routing vendors and is easily customizable to cover new devices and use cases.