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By Zhu Shanding

Saudi Telecom (STC) is the top regional operator in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In recent years, STC has gradually entered the international market, building commercial and investment networks in Gulf countries and laying a wide user foundation. In 2007, STC successfully entered the market in Kuwait. In 2009, STC won the bid for the third mobile license in Bahrain and became a major player in the Gulf telecommunications market.

On November 27th, 2007, STC obtained the third mobile license in Kuwait. The project marked the first overseas network built by STC and became a cornerstone for subsequent proactive expansions. This made the project strategically significant and in December 2007, the executives of STC invited three equipment vendors, including Huawei, in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to exchange respective technical schemes. After carefully considering bids for the network-wide solution from each vendor, they finally chose Huawei. 

Then, STC registered a company in Kuwait. They named it VIVA (which means live in Spanish) to express their remarkable and proactive nature that is perfectly embodied in their corporate logo as, "borderless, infinite, aggressive, and energetic". 


Building a cutting edge network 

As a member state of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Kuwait enjoys healthy economic development with low taxes, creating a great environment for the development of local telecommunication markets. According to a BMI report, Kuwait boasts some of the highest ARPUs value in the Gulf region, and even the world, reaching 69 USD in Q2 2008. 

Perceiving profits from the favorable market environment in Kuwait, STC determined to deploy a state-of-the-art mobile network there and a platform that supports abundant services in the future. The platform covers main roads and major commercial and entertainment venues in Kuwait, offering 99% of Kuwaitis GSM and HSDPA services. 

In order to deploy a high-quality network quickly, VIVA and Huawei integrated their resources worldwide to form a joint project team. After the link-up mechanism in the "war room" was set up, large-scale network deployment began. 


Breaking the bottleneck 

Site acquisition is always regarded as a major bottleneck in network deployment. This is particularly true in affluent Kuwait. Since rent is less important to a wealthy populace, health and safety become greater concerns. Members from the joint project team said: "Site acquisition in Kuwait depends on the owners' mood. If they are in a good mood, they will chat with you. Otherwise, even if you offer them good money, they will not talk to you, let alone lease their property." 

The best way to address this issue is to employ local experienced subcontractors. The local team is familiar with the local government, law, community, and culture ensuring large-scale site acquisition and preparation. For this very reason, the joint project team mainly selected the most competitive local subcontractors. 

After studying local civil engineering standards, the site design team calculated and made economical, practical, and localized site design drawings, cutting costs for VIVA and accelerating network establishment. 

Although network deployment progress is crucial to VIVA when entering a new market, the joint project team still maintains strict control over quality, prepares the site quality inspection table, and defines strict engineering processes and acceptance standards. To strengthen the quality-control awareness of all implementation personnel, the project team offers quality management training sessions for all members and subcontractors to make sure that they get it right the first time and avoid costly tweaking. 


A nine-month miracle 

The project peaked in September, which is also Ramadan, the annual month of fast for Kuwaiti Muslims. During Ramadan, all Muslims fast between sunrise and sunset except the old, weak, sick, disabled, pregnant women, and children. They do not eat, drink water or smoke. Non-Moslems cannot even eat or drink water in public places and project team members could not drink water or eat as usual in the daytime. 

Yet under the pressure of commercialization, VIVA still proposed a strict requirement for the duration of the project. According to Kuwaiti regulations during Ramadan, people only need to work in the morning. But to guarantee the project progress, the project team stipulated that this rule is only applicable to Muslims. Non-Muslims need to work normally. However, influenced by the non-Muslims, the Muslim employees also worked normal and even overtime. 

Kuwait is scorching in September, with temperatures of 46 degrees centigrade at eight or nine o' clock in the evening. Some local subcontractors propose to work in the evening and rest in the day. The project team divides the staff into three shifts who take turns working. Due to insufficient human resources, all employees of the project team worked over 10 hours or even up to 20 hours a day. 

Yet, in September, even with Ramadan, the project team set a record by completing civil engineering, equipment installation and commissioning for 239 new sites and solving the remaining problems for 236 existing sites. Huawei accomplished the seemingly impossible mission jointly with VIVA and paving the way for successful network commercialization. 

From the time of the Letter of Intent (LOI) on February 24th, 2008 to successful commercialization of the whole network on December 3rd, 2008, VIVA and Huawei spent only nine months to open 457 2G sites, 660 3G sites and 96 IBS (Indoor Building Solution) sites. 

After nine-month of hard work, along with thousands of sites successively going live, the VIVA commercial network was smoothly put into operation. This network adopts complete IP networking and provides the advanced 2G/3G platform to support rich value-added services. 

Mr. Salman, CTO of VIVA said, "The difficulty of deploying new networks is enormous, and I am very proud that we have the cooperation from Huawei, and thank you so much for all the support you have given." 

Mr. Bader, project manager of VIVA, also expressed that, "The speed for deploying this network is astonishing. And thank you for your expertise and effort from the bottom of my heart. Owing to your passion, cooperation and support, VIVA is able to realize its commercial plan and achieve the objective." 


From 0 to 210,000 in two months 

In the two months after commercial number allocation on December 3rd, 2008, the number of VIVA users reached over 210,000 or 8% of the market share in Kuwait with 200,000 voice service users and 12,000 data service users. The average data traffic is higher than 300 Mbit/s. Voice traffic on the 2G network reaches 103,625 Erl/day and 33,785 Erl/day for the entire 3G network. 

In terms of operations, VIVA does not compete with lower prices, but is committed to providing the highest quality mobile network in Kuwait. 

VIVA offers a series of innovations, rich services, and service combinations throughout the network to bring the best possible experience for users. Besides various services provided by existing operators in Kuwait, VIVA promotes special services of its own: Mobile TV, voice SMS, collect call, and balance transfer. These services are quite popular with Kuwaiti mobile users, and the 14.4 Mbit/s download speed provides users with fresh, new experiences. 

VIVA is vigorous in completing its mission of "helping customers realize infinite possibilities" and is living up to its slogan, "high-quality networks for high-quality life". Watch them spread their wings and fly even higher in the telecom markets of the Persian Gulf.




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