Marwan Zawaydeh, group chief technology officer for Warid Telecom, a rapidly growing mobile operator in Pakistan, says that by outsourcing operations, his company could focus all its attention on customer development and retention.

"We did not have enough experienced staff to manage the operation of the GSM/GPRS network," Zawaydeh says. "For a greenfield operator like us, it's best to outsource operations to a company that can do the job better than we can. That way we can focus on marketing our services without having to worry about our network."

Warid is the brainchild of the Abu Dhabi Group, a group of prominent Middle East investors who saw a business opportunity in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other emerging markets. They had decided to spend USD 1 billion to extend mobile services to more than 100 cities in Pakistan - and wanted a top-quality job done fast.

The contract they signed with Ericsson to build and manage the new network was announced in September 2004. It involved everything from site acquisition to civil works and project management and, finally operation of the network. Services were launched in May 2005, initially covering the 28 largest cities in Pakistan.

At the time, mobile penetration in Pakistan was only about 3 percent, but there was a pent-up demand for service. Within the first 80 days of operation Warid signed up 1 million customers.

Today, the operator has 7.6 million customers in 160 cities, making it the third-largest operator in the fast-growing Pakistani market.

Delivering mobile voice and data services on such a tight schedule would have been difficult, if not impossible, without the ongoing support of an experienced vendor, Zawaydeh says. It turned a very complicated business venture into one of the fastest and most successful mobile network launches in Asian history.

"By outsourcing the management and operation of the network, we could guarantee a quick launch of value-added services," Zawaydeh says. "It helped us to respond to market demand and meet customer expectations. By outsourcing, we could also simplify the process for network expansion."

During the first quarter of 2007, Warid expects to launch services in Bangladesh, also under a contract for managed services with Ericsson. This time, the network operation will be handled from day one by a staff consisting entirely of Ericsson employees.

"In Pakistan, we started as a hybrid of 30 percent staff from Warid and 70 percent from Ericsson, all working as one team," Zawaydeh says. But now "we have confidence that our strategy of outsourcing the management of the network works, so our plan is to outsource 100 percent."

Warid also has licenses to operate in Uganda and the Republic of Congo, with plans to launch services in Congo in September, followed by Uganda in the fourth quarter.