Bookmark & share

——6 countries of LA get access to 3G services 

M Operator Turns on Your World (PDF-388K)

Aiming at enabling "Freedom to access today's world for people in emerging markets", M Operator (M for short) selected Huawei to deploy a multi-national 2G/3G network across Latin America covering Colombia, Bolivia, Paraguay, Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

With around 12.7 million subscribers and a 47% average market share, M is the leading operator in South and Central America. However, facing the challenges of fierce competition, M determined to quickly launch 3G services to attract more subscribers, and thus accelerate market share expansion and revenue growth.

After the first touch to implement GSM network for Bolivia and Columbia in 2005, M took Huawei's hand for another time to introduce 3G to this market full of vitality. Wang Guodong, PD of M LA UMTS project, Huawei, indicates: "This project is another close working relationship with M . We unite resources from M , Huawei, consultants and subcontractors as a team working hard towards the same target."

Huawei was responsible for the end-to-end delivery work, including network design, logistics, equipment installation, software commissioning and network optimization. Though the project was distributed in 6 countries, Huawei project team coordinated with M to build a cross-border project team to ensure the integrated communication channel and standardized implementation procedures. Guillermo, PD from M LA Project, indicated, "…as I mentioned in various occasions, Huawei did make the difference between success and failure…"

One of the key achievements of the project is the speed of rollout. Just for 5 months, new services were on air across the 6 countries in sequent, with the new UMTS network fully integrated with the GSM network and 3.5G functions up and running.

In all 6 countries can be seen in advertisements of TIGO: "3.5G High Speed Internet follow you everywhere". The 5-months' fast-paced rollout enabled M tripled the subscriber number in 5 weeks after the commercial launch. Though M is not the first 3G service supplier in this region, an increase rate of 53% compared with that of a year ago helped M successfully keep the market leading position.