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Investcom and Ericsson ink deal

Ericsson will supply equipment and services for the expansion and upgrading of Investcom's networks in Ghana and Benin. Ericsson will also supply the infrastructure and services that will underpin a new network in the Republic of Guinea.

Investcom currently has 3.3m subscribers under license with GSM mobile networks mostly under the Areeba brands in Benin, Cyprus, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Syria, Yemen, Guinea, Sudan and recently in Afghanistan.

In the Republic of Guinea, Ericsson will provide a complete GSM network with a capacity of 300,000 subscribers. This network encompasses Ericsson's latest technologies in switching, radio, transmission and intelligent networking.

The rapid growth in Investcom's subscriber base in Benin and Ghana has led to this increase in the capacity of the networks it runs in those countries. By June this year, Areeba in Ghana had grown to more than 1.4 million subscribers, up from 955,000 at the end of 2004.

Areeba Ghana plans to roll out innovative UMTS services to its subscribers and continue to innovate within the cellular data market. Areeba Ghana was one of the first African cellular operators to roll out EDGE, with the equipment and services for that upgrade supplied by Ericsson as part of a 2004 contract.

Areeba Benin is one of the leading operators with around 173,000 subscribers at the end of 2004, and is in the process of upgrading and expanding the current network capacity. Jamal Ramadan, Executive Director at Investcom said: "We explored our options and found Ericsson to be the highest quality and the most cost effective solution. They understand their operators' needs and are driving technology development in the global cellular telecom industry.''