Starlink gives rural backhaul a boost in Nigeria

Written By: Ken Wieland

Wholesale operator Africa Mobile Networks (AMN), which has subsidiary companies spread across sub-Saharan Africa offering mobile network operators access to its specialised neutral host rural base station equipment, has announced a milestone in its commercial relationship with satellite operator Starlink, an Elon Musk SpaceX company.

More than 100 AMN radio nodes (ARN) in Nigeria are now connected to Starlink’s low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellation. The initial rollout by AMN teams seems to have been a huge success and produced “excellent results”, the company noted in a recent announcement. On average, flagged AMN, traffic volumes have increased by around 45% across all sites migrated to LEO backhaul.  

By using Starlink’s LEO constellation, AMN said it was “able to unlock the full capability of the ARN to support the ever‑increasing amounts of bandwidth and data volumes demanded by subscribers”.