Leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel, has announced the completion of the largest network upgrade in African telecoms history.

A report by Nigerian daily, BusinessDay, reveals the upgrade which was in partnership with Swedish telecom equipment provider, Ericsson, was an end-to-end network transformation project across Airtel’s mobile operations in 16 African countries.

The exercise involved a comprehensive upgrade and expansion of network elements on all Airtel African operations, charging, including switching, radio, network management, data, and consumer-services platforms and systems.

This network transformation program is expected to enhance Airtel’s network capacity with the latest technologies from Ericsson, and develop its network capacity for next generation mobile services to customers at affordable rates.

Chief technical officer, Airtel Africa, Eben Albertyn, said: “customer is at the core of everything we do at Airtel. The implementation of this transformation program will enable us to further enrich our customer experience across the region. It allows us to provide Airtel subscribers with the best network possible while meeting the growing usage of mobile data. Our long-standing relationship with Ericsson gave us confidence in their ability to manage and deliver such a large and complex project.”

With the installation of Ericsson’s latest charging system, enabling a full upgrade of Airtel’s charging platforms, the company is offering its over 60 million customers new and innovative value-added services such as mobile wallets.

Ericsson is one of Sweden’s largest companies.  By June 2012, the company was the world’s largest mobile telecommunications equipment maker with a market share of 38 percent.

Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading integrated telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 5 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers.