11 September 2024
Africa Mobile Networks (AMN) has successfully utilised SpaceX's Starlink constellation to provide satellite backhaul at more than 100 of its rural base stations in Nigeria.
AMN expects to double this number before the end of the year. On average, traffic has increased by approximately 45% across all sites that have been migrated to use low Earth orbit (LEO) backhaul.
This deployment follows a commercial agreement announced in 2023, which enables AMN to use Starlink's LEO satellite constellation for high-speed, low-latency broadband services. Since the first base station went live in April 2024, AMN has expanded its coverage across rural villages, resulting in a 45% traffic increase at these sites.
Since installing a Starlink terminal at its base station in Yebu, Nigeria, AMN said its teams have deployed more than 100 terminals to other rural villages across the country with excellent results. By using Starlink's LEO constellation to provide mobile backhaul, AMN can fully unlock the capability of the AMN Radio Node (ARN) to support the increasing bandwidth and data demands of subscribers.
AMN's use of the AMN Radio Node (ARN) — a multi-carrier, multi-technology solution supporting 2G, 3G, and 4G — has been pivotal in boosting site capacity without requiring hardware changes. With some rural sites processing over 25,000 voice minutes per day, the benefits of enhanced connectivity are evident, enabling essential services, business expansion, and community development. The AMN ARN Node can operate up to five simultaneous carriers in either 2G+3G or 2G+4G configurations. By using LEO backhaul in conjunction with the software-defined AMN Radio Node, AMN has been able to remotely increase BTS capacity with no changes to the existing BTS hardware on-site.
