Afghanistan’s mobile operator, Roshan, has selected Lotus Solutions and Services, a division of Asia Consultancy Group (ACG), a company that was founded by the people who deployed the first wireless telecommunications network in Afghanistan, to extend mobile service to Afghanistan’s hard-to-reach regions.
Officials with Lotus said that the company partnered with industry leaders to design and launch the Lotus BTS.
Airspan Networks provided the backhaul, while ip.access, a manufacturer of cost-effective picocell and femtocell infrastructure solutions for GSM, GPRS, EDGE and 3G, supplied the GSM/EDGE access controllers and Deltenna delivered the antenna.
Airspan is a 4G wireless solution-provider and the vendor of choice for some of the world’s largest broadband wireless deployments. Developing leading-edge technology for broadband access and IP-telephony, Airspan continues to supply customers around the world with best-of-breed solutions.
The Lotus system was successfully tested in Colorado last year.
"The Lotus BTS will allow us to extend our network easily and profitably into the more remote parts of our country at an affordable cost,” said Amiruddin Ahmad, CTO of Roshan, in a statement.
Ahmad said that the technology in the Lotus solution, coupled with the company’s skills in deploying infrastructure, makes it possible for the company to bring innovative mobile services to previously un-served and under-served users.
“We are looking forward to the challenge of bringing Roshan’s mobile service to these new areas,” said Fred Vogler, chief operating officer of Lotus.
“New technologies designed into our Lotus BTS enable Roshan to create sustainable service footprints with minimized CAPEX and OPEX profiles,” said Vogler.
He said that this will make extending Roshan’s network into the remotest areas not only possible, but also profitable.
Back in January, Roshan had announced that it is the first Afghan mobile operator to provide customers with direct access to Twitter, using SMS through their mobile phones. The addition of Twitter to Roshan's current social network service offerings will connect Afghans with Twitter's more than 175 million registered accounts worldwide.With Twitter SMS, Roshan customers can now use their Twitter accounts on the go, to send and receive real time updates—aka tweets—from other users of the service, giving them the ability to talk, share ideas and reach out beyond Afghanistan.
Anil Sharma is a contributing editor for MobilityTechzone. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Janice McDuffee 
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