Tunisiana, a Tunisia-based subsidiary of Qatar Telecom, has chosen Alcatel-Lucent to transform its network entirely to IP, as it looks to roll-out LTE to accommodate richer applications such as video, multimedia, and mobile banking.

Under the terms of the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will deploy its IP/MPLS solution, based on its 7750 Service Router (SR) along with the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM). Alcatel-Lucent will also provide Tunisiana with a set of comprehensive professional services including project management, network design, installation and commissioning, software integration and operations.

The France headquartered company said that its technology would enable Tunisiana to benefit from increased reliability, scalability and speed, while reducing cost and complexity.

“By launching an IP-based network, Tunisiana can deploy next generation mobile technologies, such as 3G and LTE, and respond to its customers’ demands for advanced services,” said Adolfo Hernandez, president of Alcatel-Lucent EMEA, in a statement.

Alcatel Lucent’s Valerie Layan is speaking on day two of the LTE World Summit.

“We will benefit from Alcatel-Lucent‘s worldwide experience in network transformation and state of the art IP networking technologies to smoothly and rapidly migrate to an all-IP infrastructure,” said Hatem Mestiri chief technology officer of Tunisiana. “Alcatel-Lucent’s solutions and services give us the business and technology tools we need to compete and to offer subscribers a full scope of converged services while improving the end-user’s experience as we evolve our business to 3G and LTE.”

At the end of 2010, Tunisiana had more than 5.7 million subscribers and a 52.5 per cent market share.