Bookmark & share

The Republic of Zambia is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is dubbed "Copper Mine Nation" for its rich copper mine deposits. The Zambian telecommunications industry, though starting relatively late, has attracted more and more new players to the market because of its stable political environment and rapid market liberalization. In recent years, Zambia has seen the rapid growth in the telecom market, especially the mobile services.

MTN Group, the top multinational telecommunications company in Africa, operates in 21 African and Middle Eastern countries. By the end of 2008, the total number of subscribers had topped 90.7 million. In June 2005, MTN Group entered the Zambian telecommunications market and established its subsidiary company. The statistics from Mobile World showed that the share of MTN Zambia had accounted for 18% in the domestic communications market by 2008.

With the steady improvement in the Zambian economy and rise of the per capita income, the number of mobile subscribers increased from 600, 000 in 2005 to 1,030,000 in 2006 and reached 1.6 million in 2007. To obtain a larger market share in the fast growing mobile market, MTN Zambia had an urgent need to expand nationwide GSM network, aiming to improve the network coverage and quality, and enrich the value-added services. As required by MTN, Huawei proposed the Turnkey solution which integrated core network, access network and microwave for network optimization and expansion. 


Successful Microwave Pilots 

MTN Group and Huawei have maintained good partnership for a long-term, but have had no cooperation in microwave field before. To ensure the feasibility of the solution, MTN Zambia decided to launch two microwave pilots firstly and then implement the rest. Huawei responded immediately to prepare all materials needed. It took only two and a half months to deliver the equipment to pilot sites. Ten days later, installation and testing were implemented with satisfying result. The fast and high-quality delivery left a deep impression on MTN. Finally, MTN chose Huawei to expand the capacity of its entire network, including civil work, core network, wireless network, service & application, and microwave transmission. 


Efficient Site Management Model 

Due to the scattered project sites and limited transportation, it was rather time-consuming for the project manager to visit the sites and collect the information. To solve this problem, the project team designed the site information management model, which integrated all documents, procedures, risks, and materials needed of every site. This helped the project team members to get a full view of the project as well as the detailed progress of all sites. In addition, during the project delivery, the model was also used to communicate with the subcontractors about the problems happened. 


Cost-effective Hybrid of Diesel and Battery 

Zambia is a vast country but sparsely populated. Except for a few main cities, electricity is difficult to access in other areas. Generally, the power is supplied by the diesel generator (DG for short). In some important sites, two diesel generators are required, and the costs for diesel oil and the DG maintenance are high. To solve this problem, Huawei proposed a hybrid power solution of diesel and battery. By adopting this solution, the DG and batteries worked alternatively. When the DG supplied power, the batteries were charged simultaneously. When the charging was completed, the DG was powered off automatically and the batteries were used to output power. As a result, the operation time of the DG was reduced and the energy utilization was improved.

The strict operation test showed that up to 45% diesel oil was saved at most site. In addition, the frequency of diesel oil filling decreased from once every 7 days to once every 14 days, and the operation time of the DG decreased from 24 hours to under 12 hours every day. This prolonged the lifetime of the DG and reduced the maintenance workload and cost. Then, most double generators were changed into single-generators to directly reduce the initial investment on site construction.

The network expansion and optimization brought a high quality network, paving the way of brand image improvement and rapid growth of subscribers. By the end of March 2009, the subscribers of MTN Zambia had reached 778, 000 and the market share had increased to 20.5% according to the statistics of Informa. With the outstanding network and services, MTN Zambia occupies more market share, and is building a better and easier communication world for Zambia.