25 March 2003 -- Telecom Egypt, the largest telecoms company in Egypt, and the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology have signed a five-year frame agreement with Nortel Networks - estimated at about US$60m - for the expansion and modernisation of Egypt's national telecoms infrastructure.
Telecom Egypt's objectives are to drive reduced capital and operating expenses, to make available a full set of high-quality voice services, and to build a foundation for future delivery of new multimedia and packet voice services.
"This 'SuperNet' agreement deepens the cooperation between Telecom Egypt and Nortel Networks, a proven and trusted business ally," said Akil Beshir, chairman, Telecom Egypt. "It will also assist in satisfying the demands of our customers by enabling us to provide next-generation communications services such as reliable high-speed data connections."
Key elements of this network expansion are expected to include Nortel Networks Univity CDMA2000 1X Wireless Data Network solutions, Nortel Networks Succession Communication Server 2000 superclass softswitches, and Nortel Networks DMS circuit switches.
Telecom Egypt expects to deploy Univity CDMA2000 1X solutions to offer fixed-wireless services. Nortel Networks is implementing CDMA2000 1X for service providers around the world, and has designed, installed and launched CDMA networks for more than 65 operators in 17 countries that span five continents.
With Succession Communication Server 2000 superclass softswitches and DMS-100 local switching systems, Telecom Egypt will be positioned to migrate to voice over packet technology at its own pace. In addition, it will allow Telecom Egypt to offer new, revenue-generating multimedia services in the future.