Nawras, Oman’s leading communications provider, has chosen Ericsson’s solutions to provide the capacities and infrastructure required for its newly applied WiMAX Backhaul and 3G IP-RAN.

Being awarded the wireline licence in mid 2009, Nawras decided to start using WiMAX technology which performs all functions required by the new Fixed line operations, said a senior official.

The deal comes as a preliminary step to prepare for the future where the 3G IuB over IP Traffic, 2G Traffic and the WiMAX IP Traffic are all run over the same existing Ericsson access transmission network.

Ericsson’s proposed solution is based on executing necessary expansions and upgrades on its Minilink network nodes in order to provide Nawras with the needed capacities and accessibility to meet the 2G/3G and WiMAX traffic requirements.

Ericsson’s solution will help Nawras in maximizing reuse of existing infrastructure and hence reducing costs through granting the ability to run the WiMAX IP-Based traffic over the existing access transmission network, remarked Peter Rubeck, CTO of Nawras.

'This deal extends our successful partnership with Ericsson which has extended over a number of years in the mobile market. We will be able to achieve maximum reuse of existing access transmission infrastructure, improve projects' efficiency, and move to an all-IP scenario in the Access network to better serve our customers,' he added.

Robert Clark, KAM of Ericsson said: “Ericsson is proud to be awarded this contract by Nawras and surpass other competitors who were competing to win this deal. Our long-standing relationship with Nawras together with our technical advantage and cost effective services and solutions helped in achieving this.'

The contract, Clark said, will open new channels of co-operation between the two companies in the field of IP-Based networks.

'Nawras accepted Phase 0 and Phase 1 of the project involving a number of sites to carry TDM Based 2G and 3G Traffic along with IP-based WiMAX traffic. The second phase of the project will be implemented in the second half of 2010 where some of the 3G Sites will be migrated to IP as well,' he added.-TradeArabia News Service