Saudi Telecomm awards USD28.5 million network consultancy contract to Marconi subsidiary

The agreement, worth almost $30 million, will help enable STC to drive incremental revenue from around two million new subscribers, as well as reducing network hardware costs at a time when Saudi Arabia is experiencing growth in GSM subscriber demand of over 30 percent per year.

MSI, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Marconi, will provide radio frequency (RF), transmission and core network consultancy to help further expand STC's network. STC's mobile subscriber base grew 32.6 percent in 2000. STC forecasts that with the completion of its network redesign and expansion this year, it will be able to provide services to over 4.5 million subscribers, and its expanded network will have capacity to provide service to 5.6 million customers.

MSI was chosen as STC's preferred network consultant because of the success of its strong partnership developed on an earlier network expansion consultancy contract. Marconi has established world-class engineering processes and procedures with STC to enable its network expansion plans.

STC stated: "Marconi's consultancy is a crucial element to the successful expansion, management and performance of our network. Our experience with Marconi (MSI) to date has been best in class and has enabled timely and effective network expansion. As well as succeeding on the initial expansion, Marconi has formed a close partnership with STC's GSM division."

Jack Kemp, VP MSI Saudi Arabia and STC Account Director commented "Growth in subscriber demand is the impetus for all operators to maximise the return on their network investments, whilst ensuring consistent new service introductions and enhancements for customers. Saudi Telecomm has a major opportunity to add customers and new services. Marconi's value is in its understanding of how to help STC achieve its business goals."

Marconi's deliverables include:

Processes
Optimal nominal cell planning, site selection and final cell configurations guaranteeing that optimisation is kept to a minimum

Rapid and seamless integration support, ensuring that sites are integrated into the network without effecting the existing network and /or customers

Monitoring of the performance of the newly integrated sites in the network to optimise the utilisation of the site

Procedures for co-ordinating regional and central optimisation functions

RF Design
Site candidate evaluation and selection (implementation support)
Existing site capacity analysis and forecasting
Optimisation feedback evaluation and solution recommendations
In-building designs
Cell enhancer analysis and recommendations
Non-performing high and low sites
RF design equipment Recommendations
Frequency planning
Propogation model tuning

Optimisation
Single site verification
Cluster testing
Quality of service benchmark testing
Software/hardware change analysis
Performance engineering

Marconi (MSI) will also be responsible for customer care, transmission and planning of the core network.

ENDS