Wana's Success with EV-DO Mobile Broadband in Morocco

"ZTE offers us a reliable, creative, high-performance end-to-end solution that significantly increases our competitive edge and enhances our presence in the telecom market in Morocco. ZTE is not only our equipment supplier in high performance solution, but also our partner in future development,” said Karim Zaz, CEO of Wana.

Wana, an integrated telecom operator in Morocco, obtained a fixed-line network license in 2005 and a 3G network license in 2006. After three years of development, Wana evolved from an original Internet Service Provider (ISP) into Morocco’s largest CDMA network operator in 2007. The company continued to utilize the cutting-edge CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev.A technology to rapidly increase its market share in mobile business. At the end of 2008, Wana boasted a voice subscriber base of 2.86 million—an annual increase of 150% in voice subscribers, and a data subscriber base of 270,000, accounting for over 70% of the mobile broadband data market in Morocco. 

Mobile Broadband—A New Opportunity of Development
Morocco is located on the North West coast of Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and Algeria to the east and southeast. The country has a fairly stable economy with continuous growth over the past few years.

Established in 1999, Wana was originally an ISP in Morocco. After being granted the fixed-line license (including restricted mobility services) in 2005, Wana became Morocco’s third largest fixed-line network operator. The company has been actively seeking cooperation with telecom vendors from all over the world. After close examination of all vendors, Wana was satisfied with ZTE’s leading CDMA technologies and solutions and eventually selected ZTE as its exclusive wireless supplier for the nationwide CDMA WLL network.

With the expansion of the telecom market in Morocco, the number of mobile subscribers is growing exponentially, while the number of fixed-line subscribers continues to decrease. Meanwhile, the development of mobile technologies leads to higher wireless data transmission capability and closer integration with the Internet technology. All this creates huge potential market demands for wireless broadband data services. Wana is aware of the unavoidable trend towards mobile broadband data services. To maintain a good momentum of growth and gain competitive edge in the telecom sector, Wana must spare no effort to develop mobile services and wireless broadband data services. In 2006, Wana acquired the mobile network license and became a mobile operator. In 2007, after upgrading its CDMA WLL network to a full mobile network, Wana started to deploy its wireless broadband data network.

The wireless broadband data services, as a new source of profits, would drive the growth of Wana in the coming years. For the new wireless broadband data network, Wana put forward many requirements, such as how to achieve an all-IP network, how to use existing network resources to save expenditures, how to deliver attractive services and improve user experience over the new network, how to guarantee different QoS requirements, and how to protect investment while ensuring future network evolution. During the second cooperation with Wana, ZTE again demonstrated its leading position in EV-DO technology with outstanding technical strength and excellent engineering capability.　 

EV-DO—A Bridge for Smooth Transition
 At the initial stage of WLL network construction, ZTE provided Wana with an all-IP solution that could allow smooth upgrade to a full mobile platform. Wana started to widely deploy mobile data services in July 2006 after being granted the license for 3G services. ZTE’s all-IP solution has distinct advantages: distributed network construction, effective control of network transmission and O&M costs, smooth upgrade to EV-DO high speed data access services, and smooth upgrade to full mobile network. It took only one month for ZTE to help Wana successfully complete the transition from a CDMA WLL network to a full mobile network.

In the end of 2007, Wana finished the deployment of EV-DO Rev.A in Morocco. Over 50% of the total of 1628 CDMA2000 1x sites were upgraded to CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Rev.A. By using the EV-DO cards (in PCMCIA and USB formats) to connect a PC or a mobile phone supporting EV-DO to the Internet, a subscriber can obtain a downlink bandwidth of 3.1Mbps and an uplink bandwidth of 1.8Mbps. The EV-DO Rev.A network adopts different QoS mechanisms for different user groups and service categories. ZTE provides a customized QoS for Wana, so that the services can be controlled more effectively and flexibly, the latency in access, transmission and handoff can be considerably reduced, and the user experience can be significantly improved.

Benefiting from the substantial enhancements in forward/backward peak data rate and average cell capacity as well as the support of QoS, Wana’s EV-DO Rev.A network can deliver more varieties of feature-rich services, such as Web browsing, Emails, E-commerce, file transfer and download, Instant Messaging (IM), online interactive gaming, online audio/video, VoIP, Video Telephony (VT), etc.

Due to the continued investment in the research and development of CDMA technologies, ZTE makes possible the smooth evolution from EV-DO Rev.A to EV-DO Rev.B: supporting a data rate of 9.3Mbps on the 3 carriers by software upgrade to EV-DO Rev.B Phase 1; supporting a data rate of 14.7Mbps on the 3 carriers by software and hardware upgrade to EV-DO Rev.B Phase 2. The higher data rates will enable Wana to expand service offerings, enhance user experience, and maintain its competitive edge in the market for a longer period. In March 2009, Wana, ZTE, and Qualcomm conducted a joint test with EV-DO Rev.B. The EV-DO Rev.B test program, as the first of its kind in the world, has received widespread attention from global top CDMA operators including Sprint and Reliance.

Wana EV-DO—Morocco’s Top Brand for Mobile Broadband
During the cooperation with ZTE from 2006 till now, Wana has successfully accomplished a graceful upgrade and transformation from the CDMA WLL network to the all-IP mobile network and to the EV-DO mobile broadband network. At the end of 2008, Wana boasted 2.86 million voice subscribers, 270,000 EV-DO data subscribers, covering more than 70% of all wireless subscribers in Morocco. Accordingly, Wana EV-DO becomes No.1 brand for mobile broadband in Morocco.

Due to its great success in the deployment of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO services, Wana has evolved into the fastest growing telecom operator and also the largest EV-DO operator in Africa. “We are excited to see the tremendous success we are having, and we intend to continue expanding our network and product portfolio to offer the latest in 3G services to all of the people of Morocco,’’ said Karim Zaz, CEO of Wana.