Ericsson has reached the milestone of providing managed services to networks that serve one billion subscribers.
The firm has also signed more than 300 contracts worldwide, with three of the largest deals coming from Africa covering 24 countries.
Disclosing this in a statement on Monday, it said the trend toward broadband connectivity and excellent user experience had continued to drive the demand for managed services
According to the firm, in an increasingly networked society, a growing number of devices are expected to use broadband connections to deliver a wide array of rich communication and multimedia services, anytime, anywhere.
Even more advanced network solutions, it noted, were required to meet the demand for superior performance, and the natural solution for operators is to sign managed services contracts with partners that assume responsibility for activities such as operating and managing their networks.
As the world's leading provider of communications technology and services, Ericsson said it pioneered managed services for telecoms and continues to be the frontrunner in this area.
"With well over 15 years of experience in managing multi-vendor, multi-technology networks, we industrialised the concept of delivering managed services for multiple operators through outstanding Global Service Centers and a strong field service organization," the firm stated.
Network operations have traditionally been central to the business of providing communications services. During the past decade, however, this has changed. In an age that has seen the introduction of 3G, LTE (4G) and other great innovations, many operators have chosen to appoint a vendor to manage either the new technology or the legacy technology.
To stand out from the competition, operators need to focus on finding new ways of driving business innovation and improving quality of experience for their customers, the firm said.
In this light, the Executive Vice President and Head of Business Unit Global Services, Ericsson, Mr. Magnus Mandersson, said, "We're very proud to have passed the one billion subscriber milestone, as this confirms our leadership in managed services.
"We achieved this goal by earning the trust of our customers with our high-performance operations and processes and our skilled people, which are at the heart of Ericsson's services business. This milestone is just one of many on the journey we have undertaken. The next step is to make the transition from traditional managed services to Experience Centric Managed Services."
