Alcatel-Lucent Wins Bulgarian GSM Upgrade Contract
Alcatel-Lucent has been awarded a EUR32 million (US$51 million) contract by Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC) to provide GSM/EDGE solutions to Vivatel, BTC's GSM mobile subsidiary. Alcatel-Lucent will replace half of Vivatel's current GSM Base Station Subsystem network equipment and will also provide a full range of services in conjunction with this contract including project management, network design, integration, testing, installation, and multi-vendor radio network planning and optimization.
The contract runs through 2011.
"We are confident that relying on Alcatel-Lucent's extensive experience in providing turnkey integrated and cost-effective mobile network solutions will enable us to meet the growing demand for mobile services in Bulgaria," said Bernard Moscheni, CEO of Vivatel. "In addition to their state of the art GSM/EDGE+ solutions, their local services capabilities are the most extensive that we have found and this played a key role in our decision."
According to estimates from the Mobile World analysts, BTC ended the first quarter of this year with just under 1.1 million customers and a market share of nearly 11%.
Posted to the site on 15th July 2008