Zain Saudi Arabia, Nokia Siemens Networks in $ 1bln 2G, 3G contract

Zain in Saudi Arabia and Nokia Siemens Networks have signed a contract to roll out a state-of–the-art greenfield mobile network in the Kingdom. Nokia Siemens Networks will supply a full turnkey 2G and 3G mobile network, including core and radio networks, operations and business support systems, applications and a full suite of services, including managed services.

Under the terms of the contract, Nokia Siemens Networks will provide the latest 2G and 3G mobile network technologies, including HSDPA and HSUPA, based on the latest base station design and distributed architecture for both radio access and core networks according to the 3GPP release 4 standard. The compact Flexi base station design enables the customer to save significantly on capital and operational expenditure and allows for a fast rollout.
Nokia Siemens Networks will deliver a full turnkey solution, including managed services for five years from a dedicated local network operations center. The US$ 935 mln contract also includes network planning, implementation, project management, systems integration, logistics management, multi-vendor maintenance, field services and network optimization for the base station sites. The company will also provide a wide range of operations and business support system (OSS/BSS) solutions that will help Zain reduce operating expenses and manage the network and service quality for its subscribers. Nokia Siemens Networks will also provide Zain with its convergent prepaid solution, charge@once select, for voice and data.

“This huge project will radically change the face of mobile communications in Saudi Arabia and sets the benchmark for future mobile communications in the region,” said Dr. Marwan Al-Ahmadi, CEO for Zain in Saudi Arabia.

Zain, formerly known as the MTC Group based in Kuwait, is the leading telecommunications mobile provider in 22 countries across the Middle East and Africa providing a range of mobile voice and data services to over 44 mln customers. It was recently awarded the third mobile license for Saudi Arabia.

The company operates under the Zain brand name in Kuwait, Sudan, Jordan, Iraq and Bahrain. In Lebanon the company operates as mtc-touch. The company plans to commence operations in Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2008 under the Zain brand.

In Africa, Zain operates under the Celtel brand in 14 sub-Saharan African countries. The addition of Ghana will expand Celtel’s presence to 15 countries.