Bookmark & share

By Tong Yongzhi & Cao Xi

Benefiting from progressive socio-economic development projects such as the village phone program and Grameen Bank, Bangladesh' s economy has surged forward over the last decade. As an integral facet of national infrastructure, the telecom industry remains pivotal to the country' s continued success. 

The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize brought international fame to its Bangladeshi recipient and creator of the Grameen Bank initiative, Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Developed to alleviate poverty for Bangladesh people and headed by the slogan "Banking for the Poor", this innovative project introduced a system that replaced collateral with mutual trust and helped reinvigorate the global image of this underdeveloped country. In 2000, the domestic operator, Grameenphone, an affiliate of Grameen Bank through Grameen Telecom, won the GSMA in the Community award for its village phone service, which has since gained worldwide recognition and praise. 


Constant change 

Nestling between India and Pakistan in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, Bangladesh is characterized by its high population density and poverty-almost half of the country' s people earn less than one dollar a day. Nevertheless, Bangladesh features the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world. With a mobile penetration rate of over 26%, a sizeable minority of Bangladeshi people enjoy convenient Internet access through their cell phones. 

With over 21 million mobile subscribers, Grameenphone is the largest telecom service provider in Bangladesh and a three-time winner of GSMA Global Mobile Awards. Combining business savvy and social conscience, Grameenphone has released new products and services in an almost unbroken stream, including the highly regarded village phone, Community Information Centers, CellBazaar and HealthLine services among others. Grameenphone is the culmination of a joint venture between Grameen Telecom, a non-profit enterprise affiliated to Grameen Bank, and Norway' s flagship mobile operator, Telenor. With a strong presence in 13 countries, Telenor has emerged as one of the world' s leading operators through its "northern model" business style and aggressive drive for early market development. 

Accompanied by tremendous growth in telecom traffic in 2007, Grameenphone saw its subscriber base top 18 million at the dawn of 2008. Traffic continued to soar and almost stretched its legacy networks to a breaking point. Propelled by the need to enhance services, Grameenphone set its sights on constructing an extensive, flexible, and upgradeable network to minimize new service deployment costs. This was the only way the company could realistically retain its leading position in a climate of fierce competition. 


Looking for partners 

TDM and IP technology were combined in Grameenphone' s legacy core network. The two networks separate in the physical layer and communicate through Trunk Media Gateway (TMG). This structure created multiple problems in terms of repeated construction, the need for alternative routes, uneven traffic distribution, excessive core network elements (NEs), complex maintenance, low NE capacity, poor exchange ability, private interfaces, and poor network compatibility. 

Furthermore, the exploding traffic volume severely overloaded the wireless network and many urban base stations could not be expanded despite having reached capacity. Due to difficulties in acquiring sites, new site construction fell far behind requirements, which in turn degraded network quality. At the same time, other domestic mobile operators were expediting All-IP evolution to enhance competitiveness and reduce their CAPEX and OPEX. To combat the range of problems and reduce TCO, Grameenphone knew it had to construct a streamlined, high capacity core network with a simplified network structure. Such a network also needed an aggressive frequency reuse plan for dense urban areas and the backing of a complete All-IP solution. 

Telenor planned to enlist a new strategic partner as part of the push to retain Grameenphone' s leading position in the Bangladeshi market. However, a recent crop of M&As had left many equipment vendors unable to achieve management synergy in the short-term, which complicated the selection process. Nevertheless, Grameenphone identified four major vendors as candidates to implement an All-IP solution. After a comprehensive seven-month selection process that examined the technical and business viability of the bidders, Telenor' s engineers and board of directors ranked Huawei first based on its solid proposals, performance and products. In 2008, the two parties ratified the partnership agreement. 


Optimizing the GSM network 

The overall project remit centered on expanding network capacity and enhancing network performance. Specifically, Grameenphone' s national GSM network needed optimizing by swapping and expanding its legacy core and wireless networks. 

Due to the complicated network structure, the scheme concurrently comprised aspects such as core network swapping, BSS swapping, and new IPBB deployment. Grameenphone embodied high performance and acceptance standards in stringent KPIs. These required an optimized network that offered wide coverage and an All-IP evolution capability. Moreover, the difficulty of the project was elevated by the tight schedule, a complex set up process, and extremely challenging logistics. 

Nevertheless, Huawei completed interoperability tests (IOTs) on over 10 interfaces and 30 legacy NEs in just 2 months. Mr. Tanveer, Head of Network Operation at Grameenphone, noted, "We' re fully satisfied with Huawei' s performance in the IOT project and its customer-oriented attitude." The MSX, UMG, SIWF, IGWB, SG, M2000 and ngHLR were also successfully tested over these two months, fortifying the strong technical foundation for the entire project and justifying the faith Grameenphone expressed for Huawei' s test and solution proposals and mobile softswitch products. 

Large-scale network deployment and cutover followed. Based on a comprehensive analysis of the legacy network by Huawei engineers, Huawei assisted Grameenphone to construct its bearer, core and wireless access networks. Following hardware installation, Huawei trained Grameenphone personnel and fully briefed the operator on each solution for each cutover to ensure stable results on a large-scale. 

This project was the first Grameenphone-Huawei cooperation, the result of which has been considerably enhanced network-wide KPIs. As parts of the large-scale swap in October 2008, Huawei and Grameenphone introduced a health, safety, and environmental management system for the project, which deepened the communication process and strengthened the mutual trust and understanding between the partners. During the two months of cooperation, Huawei assisted Grameenphone swap over 300 sites. The operator' s preliminary acceptance test (PAT) testified to Huawei' s top-quality solution and robust processes. 

GSM optimization has enabled Grameenphone to augment service delivery at competitive rates and revitalize the company' s long-term development. Despite the global economic downturn, Grameenphone has maintained a strong growth momentum with 2009' s financial report for Q1 and Q2 revealing respective growth rates of 7% and 10%. Thus, Grameenphone sits poised to enhance communication services in Bangladesh and help lift the country further out of poverty through a robust telecom network.




Thanks for your support to WinWin, if you have any opinion or suggestion, please to us.