Alfa, the Lebanese mobile network being managed by Orascom Telecom, has partnered with Ericsson to help improve its network performance and facilitate planning and rollout of network in the country.

This new partnership comes to complement a long-standing relationship between both companies in the field of telecom technologies and solutions, said a senior Alfa official.

"The year 2009 was of a great significance to Alfa, as it managed to accomplish major expansions and new site deployments to accommodate the increase of its subscriber base," said Assad Abousleiman, CTO of Alfa.

“These activities are part of Alfa’s continuous efforts to provide its customers with the best quality of services. We referred to Ericsson by being the ideal partner to deliver such a task with the highest level of professionalism and efficiency due to their combined multinational expertise in Core, Radio and Transmission domains,” he pointed out.

"In order to maximize the benefits of these achievements, Alfa joined forces with Ericsson, the world’s leading provider of telecom services and equipment, to further enhance its network and support Alfa’s rapid network expansion addressing almost a doubling of its subscriber base," Abousleiman stated.

Ericsson said it had completed several auditing sites and will support Alfa to increase the number of sites in order to improve both the coverage as well as the quality of service.

"This is due to the extensive software optimization carried out and the implementation of a new frequency plan," said s Tony Abboud, Key Account Manager, Ericsson.

Ericsson Optimization solution includes Core network audits and highway coverage optimization. Ericsson performed Cluster optimization through dividing Lebanon into 10 main clusters in order to enhance the quality of service in each of these clusters.

"The Ericsson services go further to include a holistic approach to improve both the total network performance as well as the radio frequency network. This will result in reduced number of drop calls and better coverage especially in difficult terrain areas," he added.

Tarek Saadi, head of Ericsson’s Northern Middle East region, said the partnership represents an ideal example of win-win business co-operation.

"As the leader in the telecom services, Ericsson today is not only supporting operators in optimizing their activities, but also actively operating and maintaining their networks globally with more than 270 million subscribers," he added.-TradeArabia News Service