Aviat (News - Alert) Networks announced METCO, a telecommunications company in the Middle East, has integrated its microwave backhaul solution to power Zain Kuwait’s LTE network.
Zain (News 
- Alert) Kuwait, a part of the Zain Group, just launched LTE, offering the fastest Internet mobile in the country to its customers. The microwave backhaul network upgrade is part of this expansion.
Zain is the first mobile operator to launch nationwide 4G technology in the country.
Since 2004, Aviat has been supporting the microwave backhaul platform of Zain.
"Zain has always had an all Aviat Eclipse microwave backhaul network, which has been integrated through METCO," said Fahad Al-Ali, director, Network Division, Zain Kuwait. "We want to simplify our business; we want to grow our network. METCO can provide all the business and technology expertise that will help Zain achieve its goals."
METCO has been an official backhaul network partner for Zain for the 25 years. The company helps in transmission and backhaul networks in several countries including Kuwait, Iraq and Sudan. Zain Kuwait has kept a close relationship with METCO, from the days of purely TDM based interfaces, the company said.
"METCO plays the role of strategic partner to Zain, helping the operator plan and deploy their backhaul network," said Bassem A. Jalil, CEO of METCO, in a statement. "We continuously support Zain in evolving their backhaul network to address the exponential increase in data traffic and technology evolution. Using Aviat's technologies has helped us achieve those goals."
Microwave backhaul of Zain began to evolve when the operator migrated from 2G to 3G. The latest innovations introduced into the Eclipse Packet Node microwave-networking platform now allows the mobile operator to increase backhaul link capacity as it begins to consolidate mobile phone technologies at each cell site.
"Aviat Networks provides LTE (News - Alert)-proven microwave backhaul solutions to the world's largest carriers, including Zain, delivering superior IP/Ethernet and RF performance," said Michael Pangia (News - Alert), president and CEO at Aviat Networks. "Our backhaul solutions are serving networks with an excess of 3 million LTE devices."
Edited by
Braden Becker
