BARCELONA, Spain – February 14, 2011 - Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) announced its award of two contracts worth SAR 450 million ($ 120 million) for the construction and rollout of its long term evolved (LTE) infrastructure in a number of cities and regions in the Kingdom, making it the first operator to embrace LTE.
Mobily made the announcement on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, adding that the contracts signed with the world’s two infrastructure giants Samsung and Huawei are for the commissioning of 2,400 LTE towers in 30 plus cities and an upgrade of Bayanat Al Oula’s WiMAX infrastructure.
“Mobily based the vision for its infrastructure investment on the landscape and opportunities available in the telecommunications sector in the Kingdom,” Khalid Al Kaf, said Mobily’s managing director and CEO. “Taking this into account, LTE is the technology of choice for providing advanced high data communication services at affordable costs, half those of 3rd Generation mobile.”
“Mobily is committed to investing in broadband technology infrastructure, fixed and mobile, to bring the latest products and services to the consumer and business segments,” he added.
Al Kaf further pointed out Mobily would be the first company in the region to operate an LTE and WiMax network using the same towers at high quality and reliability, both of which will be used to provide broadband service to densely populated areas to achieve the company’s growth, efficiency and differentiation based strategy by offering integrated fixed and mobile telecommunication solutions to maintain leadership in the data communication segment of the market.
The LTE based infrastructure is expected to allow Mobily to provide data communication speeds that reach 100 megabits per second to meet the developing aspirations of Mobily’s growing broadband base, last reported as five million customers, among them 2.3 million subscribed to Mobily’s high-volume data bundles.
“Mobily is an innovative operator, led by people who have place top priority on providing the best quality service even taking challenges. Although rolling out a dual standard network of LTE and WiMax demands highly expertise, Samsung will make every effort to make Mobily become 4G leader in the Middle East with Samsung’s 4G ability.” said, Youngky Kim, Executive Vice President and Head of Telecommunication Systems Business at Samsung Electronics.
The contracts follow field testing conducted last year to identify the needs of constructing and rolling out an LTE network, as well maintenance and operation aspects to keep these kind of networks running optimally.