Customers of MTN Group and Liquid Telecom are set to benefit from a larger connectivity footprint across Africa. This follows an announcement today that the two companies have partnered to jointly offer customers access to the largest fixed and wireless footprint across the continent.

The partnership, which covers wholesale, carrier-to-carrier, high speed broadband, enterprise and fixed data services, enables MTN and Liquid Telecom access to each other’s fixed and wireless networks in countries on the African continent, where one party may not currently have presence.

According to Liquid Telecom, the partnership is in response to the increasing demand from businesses across West Africa for the company’s broadband service. “We have a well-deserved reputation in East, Central and Southern Africa, for providing quality broadband to businesses. We are laying 100km of new fibre every week but have decided to partner for the time being in West Africa so that we can immediately meet demand from businesses there,” says Nic Rudnick, CEO of The Liquid Telecom Group.

The partnership enables Liquid Telecom to offer businesses gigabit-speed services accompanied by negotiated SLAs and consistently excellent 24/7 customer service. The additional countries which Liquid Telecom will now have a presence in are Benin, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Republic, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan and Swaziland.

The agreement with Liquid Telecom gives MTN the ability to service its multinational enterprise customers in Burundi, DRC, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

“This partnership will provide great benefits to our customers. We will be able to leverage each other’s products and services to improve our offerings to carrier and enterprise customers in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In addition, we have the opportunity to offer our customers services beyond our footprint, thanks to the combined footprints of both companies, as well as those of our partners. Furthermore, this partnership reinforces our extensive service offerings in country and internationally,” says Elia Tsouros, MTN’s Enterprise Business Unit Head of Global Sales.