Integrated telecommunications services provider Orange will connect an additional 200 buildings in Nairobi County to its latest technology, the Multi-Services Access Nodes (MSAN) next generation switches before the end of this year.

The telcos development comes under its Pambazuka transformation programme launched back in 2012 that seeks to replace the operator's transport copper cabling with fibre infrastructure in order to enhance network reliability and reduce its operational expenditure that has been widely caused by vandalism.

Over 500 buildings countrywide are now on the new infrastructure facilitated by the migration of 25 regional switches with Orange's biggest switch centre the Milimani Exchange in Nairobi having migrated by the end of April last year and with that, the entire of Nairobi's upper Hill area now connected to the fibre infrastructure.

"We aim to build on best practices and benefits, thereby bringing a wealth of innovative products and services to the country. Nairobi constitutes about 70% of our business market with the new infrastructure, we have 99.5% uptime reliability and we are able to connect our customers within 24 hours," said CEO Mickael Ghossein.

Compared to copper infrastructure a fibre network is more ideal with a key objective to support the growth of the entire market chain: SMEs, large corporate as well as public sector organizations to cope with their dynamic ICT needs.