Ericsson today announced that it has won a two-phase turnkey contract to implement microwave and optical transmission solutions for M1. The project will vastly enhance the capacity of M1's mobile network backbone to meet the current and anticipated traffic increase in their mobile network resulting from an uptake of the operator's mobile broadband services.

Under the agreement, Ericsson is to supply, implement and maintain full turnkey microwave and optical transmission solutions that allow optimization on both network and sites - acting as the backhaul of M1's wireless broadband and cellular traffic - thereby resulting in a more robust and cost-effective network 

The transmission portfolio, comprising of Ericsson's MINI-LINK solutions, Optical MultiService Metro-Edge (OMS) platform and the ServiceOn management system, is expected to rollout in early part of 2008 and will involve several hundred sites across Singapore. 

The two-phased project will focus on expanding the capacity of these 600 sites and fully utilizing backhaul speeds, thereby improving performance of M1's transmission network.