By Tom Westcott.
Tripoli, 7 February 2013:
A Libyan SME has beaten international competition, including Chinese telecoms giants ZTE and Huawei, to win . . .[restrict]a LD 5 million contract from Libyana.
Telecoms service and solutions company, Alwadi Communications, has landed the contract to install the infrastructure for high-speed internet and reliable mobile coverage to 57 hotels, government buildings and airports.
Their local knowledge, partnerships and expertise meant that, for once, the Chinese firms which have, in the past, dominated the telecoms sector here, just could not complete.
“Our technical proposal was incredibly detailed,” Aimen Abuaisha, business development officer for AlwadiComs told the Libya Herald. “Because we were local, we had the resources and expertise to analyse each building. We had the tools, the partners and competitive pricing,” he explained.
The project will bring what is known as an ‘in building solution’ (IBS) to high-priority structures by running copper feeder cable through each building and installing antennae at strategic positions.
“It is a complete change of infrastructure inside buildings for telecoms operators,” Abuaisha said. “High-rise buildings and hotels normally have bad mobile telephone reception and connectivity, because radio signals cannot penetrate them.”
The contract, thought to be the biggest IBS project in North Africa, will take nine months to complete. Work is expected to start in about a month when the first shipment of parts, including some 95 km of copper cable, arrives.
“We very much appreciate Libyana’s support of local partners, as this will reinforce the Libyan economy,” said Abuaisha.
When AlwadiComs launched its IBS product, it won a key early deal after installing the system for free on part of the premises of a potential customer, convincing sceptical executives that it worked. “That was an investment for us,” said Abuaisha, “but we were sure this was the solution they were looking for.”
AlwadiComs was set up in 2005 by three engineers, Aimen Abuaisha, Aladdin Abuaysha and Abdel Rahman Bagegni. The company was small but the idea was big: to provide telecoms services and solutions to businesses in Libya.
Eight years later, some of AlwadiComs’ main clients include the country’s top telecoms operators, Libyana and Almadar, and oil companies, for which they provide technical solutions for mobile desert oil rigs. [/restrict]
