Etisalat Group’s Atlantique Telecom on Wednesday announced that it has signed a five-year, multi-country agreement with Ericsson, which will now manage the telco’s African mobile networks.
Atlantique said that the number of mobile connections in Africa has grown at an average of 30 percent per year, and that the growth showed no signs of slowing down.
The new contract will therefore help the telco to develop its offerings, based on value-added services, to a growing subscriber base, offering a much broader range of solutions.
“With the evolution of the competitive landscape in our markets, we need to adapt our operating model to provide a better service to our end users,” said Nagi Abboud, CEO, Atlantique.
“Adopting this business outsourcing model is therefore an important step in our group strategy execution that will be for the benefit of our subscribers, who remain our top priority, and this will, as well, open new growth opportunities to our employees.”
The contract covers network operations, field maintenance, network optimisation and spare parts management for Etisalat’s multi-vendor mobile networks, including access, core and transmission, as well as value-added services.
“Managed services is a proven business model to support operators in growth mode and it is one of the most dynamic areas in our industry,” said Lars Linden, Head of Ericsson in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Our work together will support Atlantique Telecom in defining a new generation of operators in Africa.”
