Zain Group has chosen Tekelec to enable Zain Nigeria Ltd. to quickly facilitate migrating to an all-Internet Protocol (IP) multimedia subsystem (IMS) network.

Zain Group provides mobile services in 23 countries and is the world's fourth-largest telecommunications company based on geographic presence.

Major factors in Zain's selection of Tekelec were the technology's market-proven reliability and ability to scale to the growing demands of global service providers.

Statement from Zain Group said another important feature in Zain's selection of Tekelec's EAGLE 5 platform was Tekelec's support of SIGTRAN (SS7 signaling over IP), which is a stepping stone for cost-effectively migrating to an all-IP network.

"SIGTRAN enables service providers on the public-switched telephone networks (PSTNs) to use an underlying IP transport vehicle, thereby allowing them to offer their subscribers multimedia services through their existing network. Zain Nigeria completed the EAGLE 5 deployment in Q4 2008".

"The project has been managed by Tekelec in an exceptionally professional and consistent manner even when faced with integration into a challenging environment such as Nigeria ," said John Earley, Technical Director for Zain Nigeria.

"I can say with confidence that Tekelec's handling of this project from start to now has been faultless. We are looking forward to a seamless integration into our existing core and anticipate substantial improvements in network signaling performance."

In 2007 and 2008, 37 of Tekelec's 40 new customers purchased the EAGLE 5 platform across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Central America, Europe, and the Middle East . The company's solutions are now deployed in 103 countries.

"On a global basis, Tekelec is experiencing strong success with our EAGLE 5 platform," said Wolrad Claudy, Tekelec's senior vice president of global sales.

"Customers consistently cite Tekelec's commitment to innovation and how that's demonstrated in the EAGLE Product Family's constant evolution as a platform to support their migration to next-gen and IMS networks. In the majority of cases - including Zain Nigeria - the EAGLE 5 platform displaced another that could not reliably support the service provider's migration plans in a flexible and scalable manner."

Industry trends driving the demand for Tekelec's EAGLE 5 platform are continued strong growth in the number of global mobile subscribers in emerging markets like Nigeria, short message service (SMS) growth worldwide, government-mandated number portability, and routing flexibility.

The EAGLE 5 platform has been enhanced with increased signaling capacity, scalability and performance to address these issues as well as the complexities of hybrid, next-gen and all-IP networks.