MTN-MIP fellows tour Huawei’s 5G Innovation Hub, Support Centre in Lagos

Last week, the fellows of the MTN Media Innovation Programme (MTN-MIP Cohort 4) were given an experiential tour of Huawei’s 5G innovation hub, Cloud Service and Service Centre in Lagos. The tour was organised by the MTN Nigeria team in collaboration with Huawei as part of their immersive learning experience with the School of Media and Communications at the Pan-Atlantic University.

At the innovation hub, the group was given a demo of Huawei’s smart city solutions, power solutions, improved router/ antenna designs and cloud solutions, which make Huawei a resilient and integral partner to drive MTN’s evolution from being a connectivity provider to being a digital enabler.

The innovation centre features a demo of AI video auto-creator software that generates simple 30-second epic videos using avatars created from a quick selfie by the guests. The HD video is generated in under a minute using the power of 5G and sent to the participants’ phones via WFi.

The group later participated in an informative lecture by the Huawei team. The session demonstrated the capacity of the 5G network to support the growing internet habits of today’s citizens and how MTN is positioned to provide a reliable service to power Nigeria’s digital economy.

Recall that in December 2014, Huawei launched its local cloud service in Nigeria by unveiling a Tier 3+ data centre with carrier-neutral capabilities and a modern architecture designed to support over 30 cloud services, including computing, network, storage, managed databases, and security. 

At the heart of Huawei’s decision to establish a local cloud infrastructure in Nigeria is its aim to address the twin challenges of data sovereignty and latency. Chris Lu, the company’s CEO in Nigeria, made this clear during the launch, saying, ‘Trust for reliability and speed is the reason Huawei is localising cloud services.’ 

A partnership with MTN will significantly ease the strain of local distribution, a quality for which the Nigerian largest mobile network is renowned. Hence, for businesses and governments alike, the question is no longer whether to adopt cloud solutions, but how quickly they can leverage Huawei’s offering to unlock new opportunities.

Similar: Huawei officially launches local cloud in Nigeria, says data sovereignty is guaranteed

At the end, the participants were awarded a certificate to commemorate their participation.

Subsequently, they were given a tour of the Huawei Service Centre. The 4,000 square metre facility houses 850 Network Operations Centre (NOC) engineers who provide support to players in the telecoms, finance, power, transport, and public service sectors.

With a focused support team that provides 24/7 support across four shifts, the team monitors MTN’s network structure nationwide to identify issues, assign resources to resolve them and minimise downtime, in line with international process standards (eTOM & ITL) and Huawei Global best practices.

The centre also has a dedicated DevOps team to customise the monitoring system to suit the clients’ demands. The centre is ISO27001 certified, and 100% of the employees have security certifications.

To round off the eventful night, the cohort was hosted to a dinner, which was also attended by MTN’s Chief Services and Sustainability Officer, Tobechukwu Okigbo. At the dinner, he encouraged the delegates to make the best of the opportunity and participated in an experience-sharing moment.