Combes writes: I’m especially pleased to present now my vision for Africa. First allow me to tell you, why Africa? For me Africa is right at the center of tomorrow, it’s an important area on the planet, it’s certainly a clear focus marketplace for us as well as a growing region.

These technologies are what operators and service providers in Africa are requesting from us and additionally what the African marketplace wants in the past few years to come.

We see the continent has various connectivity needs, vital for its economic and social development. Raising the access to ultra-broadband services is important for the future development in Africa. The infrastructure of the content will need greater ability to supply high quality ultra-broadband connectivity to support added-value services in both urban and remote regions for end users.

As a result of the investments over the past years as well as thanks to Alcatel-Lucents sub technology, Africa is now linked to the remaining part of the entire world through a large number of kilometers of sub networks systems (really, many of them deployed by Alcatel Lucent). Many African nations are linked to the regional hearts and to the terrestrial backbones, but rural areas lack.

In today’s world, initiation has no edges and consequently, African nations cannot stay locked out. Global communications have been improved by the globalization of the market as well as the advancement of the electronic world.

This collaborative work enables us to identify distinct versions of execution of national strategies, setting in place public-private endeavors and sharing expertise, our direction and best practices from all over the world. We think the mobilization of a powerful eco system of private and public stakeholders is crucial for the performance of a government’s broadband strategy as well as the success of both the implementation. Broadband for all isn’t just a good advertising moto but every network has its success. I firmly believe that network obstacles will break to enhance the end user mobile broadband expertise which is the sole efficient method to match the growing demand for mobile broadband. Service and business providers are shifting and they want more than a technology seller that is conventional however an advanced associate who’ll follow these in the race of shaping the future – going from breakthrough initiation to exceptional and proven functional capacities to be able to satisfy network conditions.

What makes Africa really special for me is this area is extremely full of history, its diversity, different cultures and surroundings, many powerful developments in so many nations, all not at exactly the same rate, lots of ingenuity and innovation, but at the same time still a lot of challenges and local problems but with one powerful advantage who are full of energy: the individuals of Africa. And the success and abundance in Africa relies on its people.

At Alcatel Lucent in the last year, we’ve found several LTE networks with recognized cellular and fixed wireless broadband operators along with huge increase in FTTX, VDSL, IP, DWDM technologies. LTE is growing more and more popular in Africa as this technology provides a great alternative to frozen broadband (which isn’t broadly obtainable in this area, overall, with some exclusions). Service providers in Africa are keen to tap in the latest generation of technologies like 4G LTE to start to reap the gains of today’s ultra-broadband networks. In Nigeria, Ghana, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda and Cote d’Ivoire – they’ve selected Alcatel Lucent as a number of them and their associate for rolling out their LTE networks also have requested us to handle their whole networks in a managed services contract.

Managed services are an essential element of our company in Africa. More and more customers request us not to construct them the networks, but in addition to take responsibility for the network processes, on their behalf – for example in South Africa and in Nigeria, Ghana. Our managed services option is a mixture of the benefits of our local existence as well as using tools and international standardized best practices; relying on our international Network Operations Centers, united with the experience on the earth of our team.

Professional services are in high demand by providers in Africa.

We see Africa as a huge marketplace in the following years and beyond. In the following two years we anticipate more LTE/4G jobs in addition to IMS and IP core transformation endeavors.

Alcatel Lucent’s history in Africa is also about individuals. Across the African continent we’ve powerful teams with exceptional local knowledge specialized in a variety of technologies for both cellular and fixed connections, including wireless and fixed ultra- optics, broadband access and IP technologies in addition to services, including installation services along with managed and professional services. Our specialists on the earth are working together with the African ecosystem to introduce options and new technologies that can help in creating and developing economical and societal worth.