Over 100 rural base stations in Nigeria connect to Starlink’s satellite

Over 100 rural base stations in Nigeria have been connected to Starlink’s low-earth-orbit satellite constellation. Wholesale operator, Africa Mobile Networks (AMN), which has subsidiary companies spread across sub-Saharan Africa, offering mobile network operators access to its neutral host rural base station equipment, informed that the over 100 rural base stations were connected through its relationship with a satellite operator, Starlink, an Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.

According to TelecomTV, on average on flagged AMN, traffic volumes increased by around 45 per cent 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”.

AMN, registered in the UK and backed by Facebook and Intelsat, developed the software defined ARN. The product is pitched as a multi-carrier and multi-technology (2G/3G/4G) radio node, which can operate up to five simultaneous carriers in either a 2G+3G or 2G+4G configuration. By using LEO backhaul, AMN claimed it has been able to increase base station capacity remotely with no change to existing onsite hardware.

“To illustrate the power of the ARN and Starlink together,” remarked the official announcement, “some rural AMN sites are processing more than 25,000 voice minutes per day,” it stated.

The first Starlink terminal linked to an AMN base station in Nigeria was installed in April this year. Before the year is out, AMN expects the number of Nigerian rural villages hooked up to Starlink backhaul to reach more than 200. There is also an expectation at AMN that the hook-up with Starlink will pave the way for 5G services later this year

AMN began rolling out rural base stations in Nigeria in 2018. The company said in April 2024 that it owned and operated some 1,600 base stations across the country, but was aiming to increase that number to 2,000 by the end of June.

LEO developments in Nigeria come on the back of a commercial agreement between AMN and Starlink, announced in July 2023, to “connect millions across Africa”. Nigeria, as far as TelecomTV is aware, seems to be the only country so far that has Starlink-connected ARNs up and running.