Africa Mobile Networks (AMN) has entered into a commercial agreement with Starlink, SpaceX’s constellation of low Earth orbit satellites, to provide high-speed, low-latency connectivity to AMN’s mobile network stations.
- The partnership aims to connect even the most remote and rural communities in the world, supporting AMN’s vision of a fully connected world where telecommunications services are accessible to all.
- AMN has already made significant progress towards this vision, with over 10 million people in nearly 4,000 communities across 14 sub-Saharan African countries benefiting from AMN’s towers.
- AMN’s own Radio Access Network (RAN) technology allows the provision of 2G, 3G, or 4G services from a single radio node on its low-cost base stations.
- The collaboration with Starlink enables AMN to bring 3G and 4G services to rural communities with high-quality service and meet the increasing bandwidth and data demands of subscribers while remaining economically viable.
- AMN plans to deploy Starlink terminals at sites in Nigeria in 2023 as part of a larger project to connect 700 additional rural communities by the end of the year.
- Currently operating over a thousand sites in Nigeria, AMN aims to increase this number to two thousand by the end of the second quarter of 2024.
- AMN’s flexible multi-carrier and multi-technology RAN can support up to 5,000 subscribers per node and is manufactured in the UK.
- Chad Gibbs, SpaceX vice president for Starlink business operations, highlights the importance of the partnership in bringing high-speed connectivity to millions of people, especially in rural and isolated communities in Africa.
- In addition to its operations in Africa, AMN has recently launched services in Latin America and plans to offer services in Asia starting in 2024.