Telecom Namibia said this week that a major backbone network re-engineering from 26 March to 29 May 2007 may cause limited disruption of services on its network.

Telecom constructed multi-million dollar fibre optic ring networks that span through the entire country.
Traffic from almost all connected networks is transported over the SDH (Synchronised Digital Hierarchy) transmission network which forms the basis of Telecom’s transmission infrastructure.
The SDH transmission backbone was recently upgraded from STM-4 (622 Mbps) to STM-16 (2.5 Gbps) in order to meet the increasing demand for bandwidth-hungry, high speed data services, such as s CDMA, ADSL and WiMax that Telecom is currently deploying to meet customers’ demands.
“The increased bandwidth demands from cellular operators – MTC and CellOne – also necessitated the network upgrade,” the company said in a statement.
Telecom Namibia, in partnership with Marconi, a supplier of telecommunications and information technology equipment and services, will re-engineer the current SDH backbone network in preparation for the introduction of automated protection of services through fibre ring networks. “The re-engineering is also intended to enhance the quality and flexibility of the transport networks.
The project entails the modification of the circuit information database and will be performed through a phased process. It will be conducted from 23h00 to 06h00 to limit the effect of disruption of telecommunication services to customers,” the statement said.