Lucent announced Tuesday that Zain Saudi Arabia (Zain KSA) has selected Alcatel-Lucent'sI P/MPLS-based mobile backhaul solution to respond to the sharp increase in bandwidth requirements, and to keep pace with subscribers' demands. Saudi Arabia is widely recognized as the largest telecommunications market in the Middle East region, with growth in this sector currently estimated at about 30 percent per annum. A recent report by the Riyadh-based Economics Studies House, commissioned by the MTN Group, showed that the penetration rate of mobile phones in Saudi Arabia could grow from the current 32 percent to 60 percent by 2014, with over 20 million subscribers. The Alcatel-Lucent solution offers a converged, scalable, multi-access and all-IP network allowing dynamic service creation and delivery at the lowest cost per bit while enabling broadband accessibility to all Zain KSA subscribers, delivering service innovation, streamlining network operations and generating new revenues for the operator. The solution will offer to Zain an increased capacity at lower cost while providing the necessary service reliability and quality of experience.
