Airtel Nigeria awards 3-year contract to Ericsson

Airtel Nigeria awarded a three-year contract to Ericsson to modernize and expand its packet core network. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The Evolved Packet Core solution includes the Ericsson Evolved Packet Gateway on the SSR 8000 platform which provides a split control and user plane operation, as well as the Ericsson SGSN-MME which supports multi-access, GSM, WCDMA, LTE and interworks with Wi-Fi and CDMA.

Awadhesh Kalia, CTO, Airtel Nigeria says: "As the Smartphone Network, we are constantly investing to ensure that we deliver on our promise of a seamless broadband experience for our customers. With the completion of the first phase of this project, we have already begun to see the transformation in our networks.”

Jonathan Adams, Head of Ericsson South and East Africa says: "As a longstanding partner, we are aware of Airtel’s unyielding commitment to delivering excellent services to their customers. Through this partnership, we will be deploying a comprehensive, reliable and future-proof suite of solutions that offers quicker time to market of new offerings and superior network performance.”