Alcatel-Lucent announced that Zain Saudi Arabia (Zain KSA) has selected Alcatel-Lucent’s IP/MPLS-based mobile backhaul solution to respond to the sharp increase in bandwidth requirements, and to keep pace with subscribers’ demands.
Saudi Arabia is widely recognized as the largest telecommunications market in the Middle East region, with growth in this sector currently estimated at about 30 % per annum. A recent report by the Riyadh-based Economics Studies House, commissioned by the MTN Group, showed that the penetration rate of mobile phones in Saudi Arabia could grow from the current 32 % to 60% by 2014, with over 20 million subscribers.
The report noted that this would not only require a rapid rollout of capacity to service almost 13 million new lines over the coming nine years, but would also require dramatic increases in network coverage and service availability to meet demand in the Kingdom.
The Alcatel-Lucent solution offers a converged, scalable, multi-access and all-IP network allowing dynamic service creation and delivery at the lowest cost per bit while enabling broadband accessibility to all Zain KSA subscribers, delivering service innovation, streamlining network operations and generating new revenues for the operator. As part of the Alcatel-Lucent’s High Leverage Network architecture, the solution will offer to Zain an increased capacity at lower cost while providing the necessary service reliability and quality of experience that subscribers expect, while it will strengthen the ability of Zain KSA to offer its customers the best possible quality of experience and also prepare its network infrastructure to immediately launch next generation communication and data services.