China's Huawei Technologies has signed a contract valued at over US$10 million with Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC), the sole operator in Ethiopia, as the strategic partner to construct its CDMA2000 1X WLL network.

Under the contract, Huawei will provide ETC with the complete CDMA 1X WLL system, comprising a combination of 800MHz and 450MHz, which is based on the CDMA2000 1X technologies. This system will supplement the operator's existing PSTN network via V5.2 interface. Besides the current PSTN service, the CDMA2000 WLL will also provide high speed data service to boost the network value of ETC. Based on Huawei's advanced 3G platform, this system can be smoothly evolved to 1xEV-DO, guaranteeing the future growth of ETC's business.

In this project, Huawei's 800MHz CDMA WLL system will be deployed in Addis Ababa, the Capital of Ethiopia; and the 450MHz CDMA WLL system in other three famous industrial cities. This WLL system can quickly access the subscribers and it is the cost effective way to quickly promote the tele-density in Ethiopia.

CDMA WLL saves the investment on cabling, which consists of quite a proportion of the operator's CAPEX. It also provides many attractive features that conventional wire-line access could not compete with, such as fast provisioning of services, flexible coverage, and high security.

"With the help of the CDMA2000 wireless access technology, many traditional PSTN operators accelerate their expansion of business," said Tao jingwen, President in charge of Huawei Southern Africa Operation. "As a leading vendor and reliable partner in the telecom industry, Huawei is always providing the most competitive solutions for our customers and spares no efforts in helping them win in the market," he added.