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| [PHOTO: Joe Ravi / CC-BY-SA 3.0] |
Nairobi: Bharti Airtel, a leading
telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across
Asia and Africa, announced that it has undertaken an end-to-end network
transformation program across its mobile operations in 16 African countries.
The program, which is the largest of its kind on the African continent, in
partnership with Ericsson involved a comprehensive upgrade and expansion of
network elements on all of Airtel's African operations, including switching,
radio, network management, data, charging, and consumer-services platforms and
systems.
This network transformation program, under which Ericsson
has deployed latest wireless technologies, will enhance Airtel's network
capacity and robustness and help deliver best-in-class services to customers at
affordable rates. This also makes Airtel's networks fully ready for next
generation services that include high speed data and value added services.
In addition, a full upgrade of the charging platforms across
all operations was implemented introducing the latest version of Ericsson's
Charging System, enabling Airtel to offer subscribers new and innovative
value-added services such as mobile wallets. This project which will result in
Airtel's 60+ million customers having a better experience on their networks.
Eben Albertyn, Chief Technical Officer, Airtel Africa said
“Customer is at the core of everything we do at Airtel. The implementation of
this transformation program will enable us to further enrich our customer experience
across the region. It allows us to provide Airtel subscribers with the best
network possible while meeting the growing usage of mobile data. Our
long-standing relationship with Ericsson gave us confidence in their ability to
manage and deliver such a large and complex project.”
Backed by 12,000 consulting and systems integration
professionals across the world, over one hundred resources worked onsite to
ensure successful delivery of this complex project – the largest network
modernization program in Africa's telecom history. Ericsson's systems
integration organization delivers more than 1500 systems integration projects
per year in multi-vendor and multiple-technology environments. Projects range
from single-solution integrations to end-to-end solution transformation
projects such as this one.
Lars Lindén, head of Ericsson Sub-Saharan Africa, says, “In
the transition to a Networked Society in Africa, operators are facing growing
challenges in meeting the rapidly evolving demands of consumers. The focus of
this project was transforming Airtel Africa's networks to meet current and
future consumer demands."
This transformation program follows the 2011 announcement of
an ongoing five year multi-country managed services agreement, wherein Ericsson
would manage and optimise Airtel's mobile networks across Africa.