Zain KSA has signed an agreement with Huawei to provide a single vendor solution for its Network Operations Center (NOC), which is responsible for monitoring all network traffic and helping to ensure no problems arise that could affect customers.

This agreement comes as part of the company’s strategic plans to enhance and augment the overall customer experience on the Zain KSA network.

Saud Al-Bawardi, chief operating officer of Zain KSA, said: "Zain KSA is planning to greatly enhance all services delivered to our customers by the end of 2013, with a focus on adding additional services. The decision to move Zain KSA away from traditional network monitoring methodologies to a new and enhanced, was based on our desire to provide our subscribers with the best possible experience. Huawei was selected based on its well-established capabilities and strength in the telecommunications industry, and its customer-oriented methodology built on customer experience management."

James Wu, CEO of Huawei, Saudi Arabia, said: "Huawei has partnered with Zain KSA for the last three years to work on strengthening Zain’s network, which comes within the company’s priorities in order to enhance subscribers loyalty, while accommodating the huge growth that Zain has seen in its customer base. Continuing in this role, we took over the management of the Zain network, with a world record "managed services" handover in very short time indeed."

He said: "We are now focusing on ensuring network operations and are customer experience oriented in order to support increasing Zain's revenues, reduce operating expenditure and increase customer loyalty."

As part of the agreement, Huawei took responsibility for the management and operation of the Zain NOC, converging all existing services and technologies and monitoring network traffic since May 1. This includes 24/7 monitoring of the performance of all services to enhance subscriber quality.The agreement signed spans a period of three years.

Zain KSA was the first to launch a commercial LTE network in Saudi Arabia, with plans to increase that footprint to cover all residential areas in Saudi Arabia by 2014.