Leading independent data, voice and IP provider in Africa, Liquid Telecom, has raised $150 million to expand its superfast fibre optic internet services through the continent. The company aims to connect 100,000 homes by the end of the year with broadband that could be up to a speed of 100 mbps, about 80 mbps better than the UK average.
“Our fibre to the home is better than many parts of the UK and even London,” UK’s Financial Times quoted Nic Rudnick, chief executive of Liquid Telecom, as saying.
The new funding was syndicated, structured and underwritten by Standard Chartered to a small group of banks, which includes Barclays and Investec.
The UK-headquartered data provider, which already operates in Eastern, Western and Southern Africa, plans to enter three more countries this year. As part of this expansion plan, Rudnick said the company had built 18,000km of fibre broadband across 15 nations, from South Africa to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“The first phase for many is on the mobile but they need faster internet as well,” Rudnick told Financial Times. He added that Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city will have fibre going past every house this year.
Already, Liquid Telecom has redesigned the Wi-Fi network and installed new equipment at Nakuru, Nakuru County in Kenya, to serve more than 1.6 million residents of the town. The project, which cost $400,000, according to local news platform, Business Daily, was initially taken up by Orange but it flopped.
“We have in place 60 hot spots, where connectivity will be strongest including shopping malls, the stadiums, university campuses and the county CBD,” Ben Roberts, the Liquid Telecom Kenya CEO, told Business Daily. He said the company adopted the deal on request by the State House Digital Team.
Liquid Telecom prides itself as the first to cross country borders where no fixed network has existed before. It operates throughout Botswana, DRC, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the UK under a number of different wholesale, enterprise and retail brands.
