Under the agreement, Celtel, with operations in 13 countries, will install Ericsson's Mobile Soft-switch solution, capable of carrying large and growing volumes of voice and data traffic in a state of the art, cost optimized 3GPP R4 compliant network architecture.

"This contract, will enable Celtel Tanzania to expand, enhance and further upgrade our network in the most cost efficient manner," said Steve Torode of Celtel Tanzania. "Ericsson will provide us with an innovative and flexible solution which fundamentally meets our customers' need for new services," he added.

Celtel has more than five million managed customers and mobile licenses covering approximately 30% of Africa's population. Mobile soft-switch solution will allow Celtel Tanzania to upgrade their network stepwise to a layered architecture, the first step toward an all-IP network. Furthermore it enables this upgrade to be combined with the introduction of a common GSM and WCDMA core.

"We are pleased that Celtel has chosen Ericsson as the supplier for next generation platforms and services to their customers," said Björn Olsson, Executive Vice President, Ericsson. "This contract confirms our leading position in the Softswitch market."

Ericsson was the first vendor to deploy softswitch solutions for telephony networks and leads the industry with over 50 fully commercial networks. Today, Ericsson has more than 20 live commercially deployed mobile softswitch networks on all continents with more than 100 MSC Servers and 500 Media Gateways in operation.