Zain Kuwait outsources network to Motorola

US vendor Motorola said this week that it has scored a contract with Zain Kuwait, to operate and manage the carrier’s 3G network.

Under the three year agreement, Motorola, in association with Zain Kuwait’s internal team, will handle the design, planning, support and optimization to provide high quality customer experiences as well as spearhead the optimisation of the operator’s existing 2G network.

“Motorola’s management and technical expertise will enable us to build a better network for Zain customers, while improving our operating margins and increasing productivity,” said Khaled Al Hajeri, CEO of Zain Kuwait.

As Informa Telecoms & Media’s Middle East specialist, Matthew Reed, has noted: “As the Middle East’s mobile markets mature, and with the impact of the recession still raw, many of the region’s operators are becoming more cost-conscious. Fortunately, the portfolios of international operations that the bigger players have built up over the recent few years present substantial opportunities for achieving economies of scale.”

One way international operators like Zain are tackling this is to create roaming services that take advantage of their presence in a number of countries. Zain has done the most in this area with its One Network roaming scheme, but the operator has also inked a series of managed services agreements, covering variously its networks in Iraq, Nigeria and East Africa some of which are with Motorola.