Telecom Lead Middle East: Zain, a top mobile telecommunications provider in eight markets in Middle East and North Africa, has launched commercial LTE 1800 MHz network in Kuwait.
On November 21, Zain launched LTE services under the banner of “Wiyana Connect LTE”, a newly-built LTE network that realizes Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB) as a LTE voice solution and achieved download speeds exceeding 90 Mbps.
These mobile services, made possible by both the existing GSM/UMTS and new LTE networks, provide Zain’s subscribers with a superior mobile broadband experience.
In addition, Zain partnered with Huawei to provide a range of LTE smart devices, including smartphones, routers, hotspot MiFi, and dongles. The partnership includes agreements on a series of products, solutions, and services for terminal, radio access, and core network operations and management.
Omar Al Omar, CEO of Zain Kuwait, said: “We are building a world class mobile network in Kuwait with GSM, UMTS, and LTE access to offer our customers a significant improvement in network coverage and speed. We have selected Huawei as our strategic partner and believe that their innovative solutions and extensive experience in launching commercial networks will enable customers to enjoy an incomparable mobile broadband experience”
Huawei has provided SingleRAN solution that is capable of converging GSM, HSPA+, and LTE standards into a single network. This simplifies overall network structure while reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and expended manpower requirements. Huawei’s SingleOSS suite also helps realize exceptional improvements in the operations and management efficiency of the whole network.
“Our partnership with Zain for GSM, UMTS, and now LTE, demonstrates the effectiveness of Huawei’s SingleRAN solution. The solution continues to help operators simultaneously manage the challenges of operating multiple networks while meeting growing mobile broadband demands,” said Ali Shi, president of Huawei Middle East Region.
Huawei has already bagged 130 commercial LTE/EPC contracts and has launched 56 commercial LTE networks with global operators.
Recently, Huawei conducted LTE-A uplink coordinated multi-point (CoMP) trial on several commercial LTE networks in Europe and Asia. Huawei claims that the world’s first LTE uplink CoMP field trial results showed that uplink CoMP can effectively double data rates at cell edges for a single user, improving network performance in terms of coverage, spectrum efficiency and throughput.
