ERICSSON HAS been chosen by Airtel Africa for various network outsourcing contracts across Ghana and other 15 operations for the next five years.

The programme, under which Ericsson has deployed latest wireless technologies, has enhanced Airtel’s network capacity and robustness and helped deliver best-in-class services to customers at affordable rates, Lars Lindén, head of Ericsson Sub-Saharan Africa, has said.

He said the partnership would also afford Airtel the capacity to serve approximately 20 million subscribers across Africa.

“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.”

He notes also that: “The customer is at the core of everything we do at Airtel. The implementation of this transformation programme 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.”

Eben Albertyn, Chief Technical Officer, Airtel Africa, commenting on the partnership, said that made Airtel’s networks fully ready for the next generation services that include high speed data and value added services.

He said as an end-to-end network transformation programme across Airtel’s mobile operations in 16 African countries, the programme involves 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.

Additionally, 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 will result in Airtel’s over 60 million customers having a better experience on their networks.

Backed by 12,000 consulting and systems integration professionals across the world, over one hundred Ericsson resources worked onsite to ensure successful delivery of this complex project.