Telecom Lead Africa: Ericsson will manage mobile networks of Atlantique Telecom, a part of Etisalat Group, for the next five years.

The five year multi-country managed services deal enables Ericsson to assist Atlantique Telecom which is aiming to develop offerings based on value-added services.

Atlantique Telecom has mobile operations in Benin, Central Africa Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Niger and Togo, while Etisalat serves more than 130 million customers in 15 countries.

Etisalat — through the managed services deal with Ericsson — will focus on their core business – delivering innovative offerings to their customers.

During the past decade, the number of mobile connections in Africa has grown an average of 30 percent per year.

Nagi Abboud, CEO of Atlantique Telecom, said: “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. 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 managed services contract covers network operations, field maintenance, network optimization and spare parts management for Etisalat’ s multivendor mobile networks, including access, core and transmission, as well as value added services.
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