JEDDAH: Emaar, The Economic City (Emaar.E.C), the Tadawul-listed company developing King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC), has awarded a SR320 million strategic agreement to Ericsson to supply, build, integrate, operate and manage multiplay communications infrastructure for Ethraa, The Smart City. The five-year sole-supplier partnership agreement with Emaar, developer of the smart-city project, is the first for an end-to-end fixed network in Saudi Arabia. Ericsson will design, build and operate the entire telephony, Internet and data plus video broadcasting infrastructure for all investors and residents within KAEC under the supervision of Ethraa, The Smart City. It is expected that operations will start in January 2009 and extend to January 2012.
“Ethraa is derived from an Arabic word to mean enrichment. The goal of Ethraa, The Smart City is to enrich the lives of residents in KAEC through innovative telecom, communication facilities and integrated new generation IT applications,” said Omar Al-Khudairi, senior director, Ethraa, The Smart City. “The agreement award with Ericsson is also a benchmark in cost and technological perspectives as it will enable all KAEC residents and tenants to enjoy advanced IT and telecom connectivity at a globally competitive price from day one.”
Ericsson will undertake an extensive recon and survey of KAEC and custom-develop the smart city infrastructure through a dedicated R&D team. The ICT foundation to be developed by Ericsson will ensure that investors and residents in KAEC will have access to the highest broadband connectivity possible, telephony and multimedia including seamless video connectivity.
This turnkey agreement award breaks new ground in Saudi Arabia as Ericsson’s first GPON-enabled IPTV contract, the first fiber optic contract and the first fixed-network IMS contract where Ericsson provides systems integration and network rollout services. The contract brings together products from Ericsson’s major acquisitions — Entrisphere, Marconi, Redback and TANDBERG Television — and the company’s telecom services portfolio. The network will provide innovative services — using latest Gigabit-Per-Second Passive Optical Network (GPON) fiber-to-the home technology, enabling advanced multimedia services for TV, PC and telephones. Services such as IP telephony, movies-on-demand, personalized TV, super fast Internet and data services will be provided at competitive prices for King Abdullah Economic City’s 2 million residents.
King Abdullah Economic City (www.kingabdullahcity.com/en/ ), spread over 168 million sq m on the Red Sea coast, is the largest private sector development in the region, and has six key components — the Sea Port, Industrial Zone, Central Business District, Educational Zone, Resort District and Residential Communities. Emaar.E.C has unveiled the first phase of the mega-project including the sea port, industrial zone and residential communities to overwhelming investor response. International and regional investments worth over SR130 billion have been announced in the mega-project, which is being developed as per schedule.