Ericsson Expander lowers the total cost of ownership for operators extending their networks into new geographical areas. While the components in the Expander package cover the entire mobile network, the focus is on enhancing the radio component. This allows for a minimum of base stations to be installed; a basic requirement in reducing the total cost of a network.
The Expander solution is based on using few, high-quality base stations rather than many low-quality, cheap base stations. As the cost of a base-station site comprises much more than the cost of the actual base station (power, rent, transmission and more must be taken into account), there is a lot to be gained from reducing the number of sites. Ericsson's studies show that a 30-50 percent reduction in the number of sites can actually decrease operational and capital expenditures by one third.
Connecting Ethiopian villages
In Ethiopia, a large, hilly country dotted with villages, comprehensive coverage would be difficult and costly to achieve without the radio efficiency of Expander. This is why the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) recently chose the solution to boost both the coverage and capacity of its existing network in Addis Ababa, as well as to bring connectivity to other regions of the country.
State-owned ETC, which brought GSM to Ethiopia in 1998, is still the only mobile operator in the country, and today has about 300,000 GSM subscribers. Most of these are to be found in and around the capital Addis Ababa, where some 2 million of Ethiopia's 69 million people live. While its network in the rest of the country is limited, ETC expects to have the 20 major roads and the villages closest to them covered by August 2005, thanks to Expander.
Moncef Mettiji, country manager for Ericsson in Ethiopia, says Expander will allow ETC to cost-effectively bring mobile telephony within reach of millions of Ethiopians. "Our Expander solution can be very widely deployed in Ethiopia," he says. "There are about 15,000 villages in the country, and Expander will provide telephony access to thousands of these without huge investments in new technology or systems."
Affordable for Colombians
Expander has also made its mark in Colombia, where national operator Colombia Telecomunicaciónes (Telecom) has invested in the solution to increase capacity and coverage for a growing subscriber base. According to statistics from Informa Telecoms & Media, the number of subscribers reached 11.3 million in the first third of 2005, making Colombia the fourth-largest mobile market in Latin America.
Today Telecom offers fixed-line connectivity in 970 of Colombia's 1100 municipalities. Over the next two years the company intends to replace this aging fixed network with Ericsson's Expander solution. One of Telecom's main aims in doing so is to bring people of low spending power (most of whom are concentrated in the countryside) a telecom service that costs them less than USD 5 per month.
Rolando Martínez, vice president of Ericsson Colombia, says Expander will indeed allow Telecom to provide rural coverage at low cost. "With other mobile solutions, radio base stations would have to be re-planned, which would increase an operator's expenses," he says. "With Expander, an operator does not need to change its present network, but instead can optimize the network to increase coverage profitably and accommodate extra subscribers at a cost within their reach."
Read more about Ericsson Expander. http://www.ericsson.com/network_operators/business_growth/expander/index.shtml
