Ericsson has collaborated with Zain in Bahrain to transform the operator’s network.

The agreement comprises of the recent LTE technology and prepaid charging including consulting and systems integration services.

Ericsson would substitute existing 2G and 3G radio network equipment while adding 4G functionality with the Ericsson RBS 6000 family of base stations.

Evolved Packet Core with triple-access SGSN-MME and Ericsson Evolved Packet Gateway based on Ericsson SSR 8000 family of Smart Services Routers as well as MINI-LINK PT and SP for IP backhaul would also be deployed by the Ericsson.

According to Mohammed Zainalabedin, CEO Zain Bahrain, “The most important thing for us is to benefit from Ericsson’s state of the art technology and experience across the board to address our ever growing market requirements.

Ericsson’s Charging System would also be executed by the Zain for prepaid subscribers as phase one of the convergent charging and billing in one solution (CBIO) as a part of agreement. Zain would be enabled to market its services with greater flexibility in pricing with the possibility of cross bundling and packaging multiple services supported by real-time charging from this business support solution (BSS).