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A Shining Star over the Nile  (PDF-637K)

The winding Nile River, calm and peaceful, is regarded as the cradle of the great human civilization; Egypt, the most mysterious country in the history, is well-known as home to the most brilliant cultures and immortal splendors. Today's Egypt extends across both Asia and Africa, with a vast land and a large population, about 90% of which live along the Nile. Our story about the Third Mobile License Project (shorted as the Project) for Etisalat Misr (the subsidiary of Etisalat in Egypt) will begin from here, the most beautiful section of the River .

Figure 1 Enchanting Nile Figure 2 Pyramid and Sphinx

The Background of the Story

As the telecommunications are growing at an incredible speed in Egypt, the Government decided to issue a third mobile communications license in June 2006 to introduce more competition into the market and improve the quality of wireless services. The bidding competition was,obviously fierce, however, Etisalat, the powerful transnational telecom operator, prevailed and after fighting off the tough competition was awarded the third mobile license.

(About Etisilat; based in the United Arab Emirates, operating networks across 16 markets in the Middle East, Africa and Asia)

After the bidding success, to enrich the Egyptian people's telecom experiences as soon as possible, Etisalat began to actively seek for the best partner to realize its third license communications dream in Egypt.

The Project aimed to cover 85% of the landmass of Egypt and more than 60 million Egyptian people. The toughness of the challenge was thus self-evident. As early as Etisalat competed for the bid, Huawei had impressed people with its rapid network deployment, customized solutions and end-to-end managed service capabilities. In October 2006, after strict bid evaluation, Etisalat announced that Etisalat Misr would cooperate with Huawei on the third-license network. In the cooperation, Huawei would undertake the construction of 2G BSSs and 3G UTRANs, supporting over 10,000 carriers (TRXs), and help Etisalat to build a packet domain core network covering the whole territory of Egypt. The network included all the necessary VAS platforms for the value-added services to be offered, in addition to providing auxiliary transport and datacom equipment.

The third-license network was put into commercial use within just six months, which was indeed a miracle. The network is a large network integrating the 2G and 3G technologies. Traditionally, operators put all emphasis on the network-linked functions in their businesses, while currently they are more concerned about two key issues: how to control the cost and how to launch various services as required by consumers to increase their revenues on new businesses. To safeguard the long-term investment interests of Etisalat Misr, Huawei supplied such GSM equipment that can seamlessly evolve into 3G equipment. For the purpose of prompt construction of the network for early operation and the application of the new 3G technology, Etisalat Misr had to seek for the most suitable model of managed services. The EOT (Establish-Operate-Transfer) delivery model developed by Huawei is just the one satisfying the requirement.


EOT, the Leading Role in the Story

To put the networks of Etisalat Misr into operation as soon as possible after construction, the Third-License EOT Project Team was set up in March 2007. From then on, work was conducted in an orderly fashion in project planning, organization setup and department planning. Figure 3 shows the contents of Huawei's third-license EOT services in Egypt.

Figure 3 E-O-T Delivery Model

1. EOT Organizational Structure and Human Resources

As shown in Figure 4, a proper organizational structure is the basis for the successful operation of a project. The Project team impressed people with its prompt and professional establishment of the required human resource teams. About three months after the setup, the project team built an organizational structure boasting all the necessary functions required, through recruitment and training of qualified maintenance personnel, to ensure a definitive division of work and clearly specified duties within the organization.

Figure 4 EOT Organizational Structure
Integrated mgt集成管理,
FM business mgt:现场维护管理,
Front Office区域办公室,
Back Office总部办公室,
Performance Mgt绩效管理

2. EOT Process Setup

The operation of a definitive organizational structure must be supported by an efficient and reasonable process. With the great assistance of the expert team from the HQ, the project team built a whole set of O&M processes such as the network monitoring process, fault management process and proactive maintenance process, which covered all the O&M requirements and ensured the O&M work could be conducted in a standardized way. All these O&M processes conform to the eTOM/ITIL international standards.

3. OSS System

When constructing the OSS system, Huawei provided a whole set of software tools and platforms to rapidly build a maintenance and monitoring system covering the NE management, network management and O&M management. The M2000, T2000, I2000, and N2000 equipment of Huawei can be used for the monitoring, diagnosis and configuration of different types of NEs. The NetForce, Huawei's integrated operation support system, is an IT support system customized for operators for their O&M management.

4. Regional Resources Deployment

The Project team made accurate maps for different regions and delivery stages. As shown in Figure 5, BSC/RNC equipment rooms, Hub sites and site locations are all shown in the map. According to the patrol experience, we can calculate the time taken to get to all sites by car. According to the SLA requirements, a region shall be divided into sub-regions, each of which must be equipped with all the necessary resources, such as the general office, spare parts warehouse, appropriate human resources, vehicles, meters & instruments and mobile diesel generating sets. It is required that all sites should be reachable within two hours and BSC/RNC equipment rooms within 15 minutes.

Figure 5 Site Map

5. Regional Patrol

To ensure the maintenance quality and monitor the operational indicators, the Back Office of the Network Operation Center (NOC) guide the formulation of the patrol plan and the regional divisions are responsible for the effective implementation of the plan. Then the regional divisions report information about the network patrol to the NOC, which, in turn, optimizes the plan based upon the patrol experience. Furthermore, the Administration of the regional divisions makes the patrol schedules according to different maintenance requirements so that the patrol tasks can be assigned to different regional departments. The regional engineers conduct routine inspections required in the patrol plan and keep a clear record of inspection results for feedback in strict accordance with the relevant regulations. (See Fig. 6.)

Figure 6 Engineer Conducting a Site Inspection

6. Spare Parts Management

According to the SLA requirements, each sub-regional office is equipped with a spare parts warehouse. Spare parts management must be end-to-end, covering the storage and replacement of each spare part in each warehouse. In terms of the Project, key spare parts are able to be delivered to the site within two hours. 

Figure 7 Spare Parts Warehouses

7. Project Management

As for the project management, the project team stood out for its capabilities of prompt integration and organization of resources, within the regions, and fast response to Customer requirements.

Egypt is a Muslim country, so the cross-cultural exchange and conflict management played quite an important role in project management. To avoid any cultural conflict, the project team absorbed Chinese Muslims as team members, some of whom are officers. In addition, the project team trained local employees. Within only six months, the localization ratio of employees reached more than 90% and that of the first line maintenance personnel even reached 100%. According to Mr. Lin Xiaobo, the first line maintenance manager, Chinese employees of the project team had known nothing about Arabic, but after training, they could talk in simple Arabic about the deployment work. In project cooperation, heart-warming stories happened from time to time. Once power was cut off suddenly at a site. The maintenance personnel went up and down to the 11th floor for four times, carrying the 400 kg of batteries, to ensure the normal operation of the site. Another time, a site broke down all of a sudden. To enter the site and solve the problem as soon as possible, the maintenance personnel stayed overnight at the site, waiting for the landlord to provide access...

A prompt reporting mechanism was another guarantee for the smooth operation of the project. The project team established the weekly and monthly reporting mechanism, summing up and reporting the progress of the work regularly to the Customer, listening to the Customer and finding out their requirements. Within the team, the morning meetings, daily reports and weekly meetings informed all team members of the Project progress.


The Story is Connecting to Reality

Since May 2007 when the network was put into commercial use, the business of Etisalat Misr has gained momentum and exhibited robust growth. In only 50 days, the number of users hit one million; in no more than half a year, the users amounted to over three million. In two months after the commercial use, the network KPI and SLA were up to the requirements, which effectively reduced the cost for the Customer. In addition, the networks were characterized by the fast adaptation to market demands and changes.

Figure 8 network growth and availability

Figure 8 illustrates that with the constant increase in BTSs, the network KPI has maintained the momentum of growth in the recent half year. Both 2G and 3G sites tend to develop steadily.

Meanwhile, since last November, the SLA has reached a satisfactory level and has kept improving .

Mr. Haithan, CTO of Etisalat Misr, in a visit, gladly told the EOT team, "Without your outstanding work, our 2G/3G integrated network construction could not be so successful." He then added, "Faced with new technologies, our networks are characterized by a wide coverage, top quality and good indicators in all aspects. The EOT team has proved itself to be a team of elites. Thank you for your unremitting efforts."