In 2006, Etisalat (Emirates Telecommunications Corporation) was awarded a contract to develop the 4th GSM network in Afghanistan and is looking for a partner that would deliver, install, implement and manage the network.

Afghanistan is definitely going to be a very competitive market in the coming future.

Launching of network at the quickest pace is the key to succeed for ETISALAT to capture as much market as possible. However, it is hard to imagine how the engineering work will be executed in such a terrible environment. The work has to be progressed in 3-5 months. After a long wartime, Afghanistan extremely lacks of all kinds of materials, in short of outsourcing engineering resource, even a screw must be delivered by air. All of these definitely test company’s logistics and project management ability.

ZTE is selected by Etisalat as the only GSM equipment and services provider due to its fast engineering executing and deploying ability.

Etisalat will build a wholly new GSM network in Afghanistan, selecting ZTE as the only vendor for deployment of full turnkey project. BSS will be distributed in 11 cities and BTS in 14 cities and 4 high ways. In addition, all the outdoor BTS will be protected by the wall and other civil engineering work.

ZTE absolutely understands ETISALAT’s expectation of the fast rollout of network. After careful and detailed project study, ZTE elaborates every step in each of project milestones and makes sure the delivery of the equipment and technical service meet and exceed ETISALAT’s expectation. 67 containers are delivered to Kabul Custom just within one month since LOI, together with the first successful call immediately. NSS part consists of 2 sets of HLR/AUC, 3 MSC Servers, 3 MGWs, OMC-S, SGSN, GGSN, ITSC and CSC. VAS part provides SMS and CRBT service.

ZTE’s new generation V3 platform products help Etisalat to save CAPEX and OPEX, and the number of subscribers increases rapidly.

To save the CAPEX, ZTE offers new generation unified platform products which can evolve to R5 smoothly without any hardware investment. All the CN elements and iBSC are based on

ALL-IP unified hardware platform, which guarantees the consistency, service portability, system reliability and stability of the hardware for all 2/3G systems. ZTE provides high capacity equipments with fewer racks per given capacity, saving installation space, and reducing the capital expenditure for equipment room. The network was commercially launched in August of 2007. ZTE has successfully helped the ETA to exploit the mobile market in Afghanistan and the number of subscriber has increased rapidly in a very short period, which leads to a win-win result. Although the terrible natural environment in Afghanistan brings a lot of troubles to the project engineering execution, ZTE won the praise from the client by overcoming all of them. By now the subscribers have already reached half million, and by the end of 2008 it will hit 1 million.

Highlights and benefits

> Full turn-key project and excellent execution capability: execute project under all kinds of terrible environment.

> All out door application in exacerbate environment: all outdoor BTS are working steadily no matter it is 50° in summer or -20°in winter.

> Fast development on network: 450k current subscribers, 350k live subscribers, total users will reach 1M by the end of 2008.

> Fast return on investment: overall solution save CAPEX and OPEX.

> Deep cooperation worldwide, long term strategic partner and to assist Etisalat to be the leading operator, help ETA expand its network cost -effectively.

Milestones

> On September 4, 2008, Phase III with 250K lines expansion.

> On September 4, 2007, 12 months after the date of LOI, Phase II finished with 200K lines expansion.

> On May 4, 2007, 8 months after the date of LOI, Phase I finished with 300K lines.

> In September of 2006, contract awarded.