Ericsson to Deliver First EDGE Network in Africa Mar 30, 2004

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Mobile phone maker Ericsson (Stockholm, Sweden) has been awarded a U.S. $32-million contract to supply cellular equipment and services to Scancom, the leading telecoms operator in Ghana.

The deal will see Scancom implementing GSM networking technologies, including Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Multimedia Messaging Service functionality (MMS) throughout the African continent's first EDGE-capable network.

Scancom, a subsidiary of Investcom, a holding company with subsidiaries in eight African and Middle Eastern countries, is already commanding 67-percent market share in Ghana. It is growing steadily and expanding the range of services on offer to clients. As a result, it has introduced a new numbering plan to cater for its soaring subscriber base and is updating its equipment to ensure it can effectively handle future capacity.

The contract was signed in February 2004, and the company hopes to begin rolling out the equipment in May 2004. The deal not only focuses on the equipment sold to Scancom, including mobile system controllers (MSC) and base station controllers (BSC), but also includes the services required to ensure all equipment is integrated into the existing network and functions at peak performance levels.

The new deal is an expansion on the current exclusive supplier relationship between Scancom and Ericsson.

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