Finland's Omnitele has been contracted to support Scancom, the leading telecom operator in Ghana, with the introduction of EDGE. Scancom, a subsidiary of Investcom a holding company with subsidiaries in eight African and Middle Eastern countries, is already commanding a 67% market share in Ghana.

From May 2004 onwards Scancom will be rolling out the first EDGE network in Africa. The current radio network will be upgraded to support EDGE, the coverage of the network will be further improved and a packet switched core network will be introduced.

"Omnitele's in-depth knowledge of GPRS and EDGE network optimisation, the hands on expertise of Ericsson EDGE implementations and an impressive track record of co-operating with small and medium sized operators made them the natural choice for us. Omnitele will support us in further improving the quality of our network and ensure that our network is put to best possible use giving our customers the most advanced mobile services on the continent." - Ahmad Farroukh, Managing Director, Scancom (Spacefon)

In the coming months Omnitele will support Scancom with pre-implementation, network optimisation, frequency planning and by performing operator acceptance tests and fine-tuning the network for both EDGE and GSM.

"We are very much looking forward to working closely with Scancom, an innovative fast growing company and a true forerunner on its continent, to ensure their customers advanced and best quality mobile services." - Timo Mustonen, Managing Director, Omnitele.