Ericsson and Zain in Bahrain have entered into a partnership to transform the operator's network.

The agreement includes the latest LTE technology and prepaid charging including consulting and systems integration services. Ericsson will replace existing 2G and 3G radio network equipment while adding 4G functionality with the Ericsson RBS 6000 family of base stations.

Ericsson will also deploy Evolved Packet Core with triple-access SGSN-MME and Ericsson Evolved Packet Gateway based on Ericsson SSR 8000 family of Smart Services Routers as well as MINI-LINK PT and SP for IP backhaul.

Mohammed Zainalabedin, CEO Zain Bahrain says, "The most important thing for us is to benefit from Ericsson's state of the art technology and experience across the board to address our ever growing market requirements.”

As a part of agreement, Zain will also implement Ericsson's Charging System for prepaid subscribers as phase one of the convergent charging and billing in one solution (CBIO). This business support solution (BSS) will enable Zain to market its services with greater flexibility in pricing with the possibility of cross bundling and packaging multiple services supported by real-time charging.