Bids in for Etisalat's 3G contract

19 September 2003
Seven international equipment suppliers have submitted bids for the contract to set up a third-generation (3G) mobile phone network throughout the country. The client is Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat), which has more than 2.4 million GSM subscribers (MEED 4:7:03).

The bidders are Germany's Siemens, Alcatelof France, Ericssonof Sweden, China's Huawei Technologies Company, Nokiaof Finland and Lucent Technologiesand Motorola,both of the US.

The scope of the project covers the supply, supervision of installation, testing, commissioning and integration of the 3G system, which will be based on the European-standard universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) technology.

UMTS allows subscribers to access the internet at speeds of 2Mb a second and use multimedia services. The implementation of a nationwide 3G network follows several months of field trials by Alcatel, Ericsson and Huawei Technologiesin 2002.

Other Gulf states are also planning to install a 3G network. MTC Vodafone Bahrain has awarded a contract to Siemens to deploy the technology by early 2004. The German firm, along with its partner Japan's NEC Corporation, will supply the infrastructure for the Bahraini network (MEED 1:8:03).

www.meed.com/telecomsit

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