Zain: Winning the Future by Refarming Spectrum

Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the Middle East and the world’s biggest oil producer. Oil exports have made Saudi Arabia a very wealthy country with high per-capita income. Saudi Arabia has 54.8 million mobile users and mobile phone penetration rate of more than 180 per cent. In this high-end communication market, users are concerned about network quality, new technologies, and high-speed data services.   

Zain was established in Kuwait in 1983 and now operates in eight countries across the Middle East and Africa. Zain acquired Saudi Arabia’s third GSM license in July 2007 and began constructing a GSM network in August 2008. It has become the third largest mobile operator in Saudi Arabia and had about 10 million users at the end of 2011.

Opportunities and Challenges

Zain focuses on mobile service and before its network transformation it had GSM, UMTS and HSPA networks. At the end of 2011, Zain’s voice network covered more than 400 cities and 59 highways. Because of its short development history, Zain lags behind rivals in network coverage and number of sites. In the next few years, the company has to invest a huge amount of capital to rapidly expand its network and catch up with its competitors.

Use of Zain’s broadband services tripled in 2011 compared with the previous year; however, Zain still only has a small share of the whole broadband market in Saudi Arabia, and there is huge development potential for the company. According to reports from international consulting company Ovum, Zain is growing rapidly and has grabbed market share from the other two mobile operators in Saudi Arabia. Zain has pressured its competitors to retain their existing customers and vie for new ones. In early 2011, Saudi Arabia’s three major operators began constructing LTE networks at the same time. The arrival of the 4G era gives Zain the opportunity to compete from the same starting line. However, the challenge for Zain is to make full use of existing resources to build a high-quality, more efficient, more flexible network that can smoothly evolve into 4G.

Network Modernization  

In the region where the ZTE project will be completed, Zain owns 900 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrum for GSM networks and 2100 MHz spectrum for a UMTS network, but there is no idle spectrum for LTE. Zain needs a solution to this problem so that 2G, 3G and 4G networks can coexist. In addition, Zain’s original network architecture and equipment was outdated, expensive to maintain, and could not smoothly evolve to 4G. Given this, Zain turned to ZTE for a wireless modernization solution.

Unified spectrum and capacity expansion for 2G network

Originally, Zain had 471 GSM sites that used the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrums. Zain significantly expanded the capacity of its 900 MHz GSM sites from S222 to S444 or S666, and at the same time, cleaned the original 1800 MHz GSM sites and transferred users to the 900 MHz network. After modernization, there were 671 GSM sites, all of which used the 900 MHz spectrum.

Expanding capacity for the 3G network

There were originally 145 UMTS 2.1G sites with a maximum download speed of 7.2 Mbps. After modernization, there were 395 3G sites, of which 303 were upgraded to DC HSPA+ with a maximum download speed of 42 Mbps.

Core coverage for 4G

The original 1800 MHz GSM spectrum was released for the FDD LTE network, and 150 FDD LTE sites with a bandwidth of 10 Mbps were deployed in dense urban areas. Tests showed that the network’s downlink speed reached 74.7 Mbps and its uplink speed reached 27.83 Mbps.

Win the Future

Through network modernization, Zain created an all-IP network and saved transmission resources. SDR base stations based on ZTE’s Uni-RAN platform were used to converge 2G, 3G and 4G networks and to support smooth evolution from 2G and 3G to 4G. This helps Zain quickly enhance network performance and roll out new services.

ZTE’s macro base stations have single-carrier power of 40W/TRX and cover a wide area, which reduces the number of required base stations. The base stations have a unique dual-PA macro base station module that halves the number of modules needed for the same configuration. This significantly reduces network construction costs.

The solution allows 2G, 3G and 4G networks to share towers, power supply, protectors, and transmission facilities and enables antennas and feeders to be reused when upgrading from1800 MHz to LTE.