World Telecom Labs (WTL) say it has passed more than six billion calls lasting around ten billion (ten thousand million) minutes through its specialist VoIP switches deployed by five of Nigeria’s interconnect exchange carriers.
The interconnect exchange carriers include Breeze Micro, Exchange, ICN, Niconnx and Solid – to build new VoIP networks across Nigeria with local switching enabled at new POPs in Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Ibadan and Kano.
According to World Telecom Labs, the carriers chose to build VoIP networks rather than legacy TDM as it was both quicker and cheaper – and, with the use of WTL’s advanced compression techniques, more calls can be transmitted down the links.
The VoIP networks have significantly improved the quality of voice calls in Nigeria by increasing capacity and taking traffic off congested long-distance inter-city links.
This was also shown in the latest figures from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) that since the end of 2013, when the new carriers went live, there has been a 70 percewnt reduction in call failure, a 50 percent decrease in dropped calls , traffic congestion down by 30 percent and signalling congestion down by 60 percent.
“The interconnect exchange carriers were wise to choose VoIP and even wiser to choose WTL whose continued support has been instrumental in improving voice calls in Nigeria,” said Jihad Jaafar, CTO of Breeze Micro, which is headquartered in Kano and works with Nigeria’s operators to transport voice traffic across Northern Nigeria.
Jaafar disclosed that WTL has been working with operators in Nigeria since 2010 helping them to maximize TDM voice capacity and then migrate to VoIP.
WTL’s range of multi-award-winning VoIP and hybrid VoIP/TDM equipment and services have been specifically designed to replace the huge, expensive, maintenance-heavy switches that have traditionally been used to transfer VoIP traffic onto other networks. They are capable of handling 1000s of simultaneous calls and being used by operators throughout Africa and the Middle East.