Alcatel-Lucent built one of the world’s largest Next-Generation Networks for WANA in Morocco

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced that the next generation network that it constructed for WANA, a Moroccan service provider, now has more than one million subscribers making it one of the largest class 5 NGN networks in the world. The service grew at a steady pace, adding 700,000 subscribers in a mere five months and exceeds all expectations.

According to Karim Zaz, CEOof WANA, “It was challenging to start as a third operator with two strong operators which had a 60% mobile penetration rate, but only a 4% fixed penetration rate. Alcatel-Lucent was able to build a very complex greenfield network, managing numerous suppliers and partners in only ten months. Alcatel-Lucent’s solutions and support allowed us to acquire more than one million subscribers in a short time period.”

“This commercial success has been achieved through an innovative marketing approach and aggressive commercial packages for our subscribers. Alcatel-Lucent’s large services and product portfolio enabled WANA to simplify and democratize telephone services in Morocco lowering the threshold for WANA subscribers to acquire their own phone and enables them to make calls at accessible prices,” added Karim Zaz.

Alcatel-Lucent has been WANA’s main partner in constructing the network to cover all of Morocco, responsible for not only deploying the entire NGN Core network, but also acting as the prime integrator of the entire network. This included definition of the business-to-business and business-to-consumer services and the construction and preparation of sites in all regions of Morocco.

“The integration role was critical for a network such as WANA’s due to the complete heterogeneity of the network, and with numerous suppliers whom we had to integrate. We successfully managed the tremendous take up they experienced -- with more than 400,000 new subscribers in less than 2 months and a traffic three times higher than initially expected,” said Olivier Picard, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities in Europe and South.

The network features an Alcatel-Lucent NGN core, consisting of Media Gateway Controllers, a SIP Core soft switch and the associated application server, Session Border Controllers and Media Gateways.