04 June 2025
ZTE Corporation has announced the successful deployment of its FTTR-B all-optical network at the office building of Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project.
Led by Ethiopia’s state-owned operator, Ethio Telecom, ZTE provided end-to-end services, including comprehensive solution design, equipment supply, and implementation support. This achievement marks a significant step forward in the collaboration between the two entities, fuelling Ethiopia’s digital infrastructure development and reinforcing the country’s commitment to modernizing key national projects.
The GERD, Africa’s largest hydropower project, stands as a symbol of Ethiopia’s national renaissance, ensuring power supply coverage nationwide, supporting industrial growth, and advancing rural electrification. The office building serving as the nerve centre for the project plays a vital role in coordination, dispatching, and daily operations, necessitating a highly reliable, secure, and intelligent network.
Traditional Ethernet networks often face limitations such as restricted bandwidth, the need for multiple separate networks to handle internet, voice, and security functions, and complexities that lead to high deployment costs and operational challenges. To address these issues, ZTE delivered a customized FTTR-B solution, transforming the GERD office into Africa’s first all-optical government office benchmark. With high bandwidth, low latency, exceptional stability, and full coverage, the new network significantly enhances operational efficiency and office experience, ushering in a new era of smart office management for the GERD project.
The deployment features the FTTR-B gateway ZXEN G100S paired with 34 optical access points, delivering gigabit fibre coverage across all office spaces, meeting rooms, and recreational areas. The solution supports a unified network that consolidates data access, voice communication, printing, and security monitoring, reducing deployment costs by approximately 25%. The built-in voice server within the gateway facilitates internal and external line dialling, short number calling, and IP phone interoperability, further streamlining communications. Additionally, the system integrates with ZTE’s ZENIC ONE cloud management platform, providing topology visualization, automatic fault detection, remote troubleshooting, and reporting, which has improved maintenance efficiency by 30%. Secure access management is also prioritized with a built-in portal authentication server that controls network access for employees and visitors, ensuring data security and enabling flexible office operations.
As an enterprise-grade solution, FTTR-B overcomes the wiring and bandwidth limitations of traditional Ethernet networks, offering a simplified, secure, and intelligent network architecture suitable for government and enterprise applications.
