April 21, 2010 -- Zain Nigeria has selected Spatial Technologies Ltd (STL) as the key GIS-based solution provider for special festivals GSM Network coverage project. This solution, with its geographic focus across Nigeria tracks annual and special festivals and other socio-economic impact.
Annual festivals like the Lisabi Day of Abeokuta, the Osun Oshogbo festival, the Sokoto annual horse race event, the Okpe Orime festival of Delta State, the Abuja Carnival, The Eyo Festival of Lagos, the Calabar Carnival, etc, are generally known as huge crowd attractions, pulling huge crowds from different parts of Nigeria and sometimes outside the country.

Thousands of GSM subscribers converging at a single venue like the Osun Oshogbo festival could be a potential network disaster if not well managed. This is because the demand for GSM network resource during this short period could be astronomical and if this demand is not met instantly, it could result in serious network failure like congestion, extreme difficulty at making or receiving calls successfully, etc
Zain Nigeria usually use special Base Trans-receiving Station (BTS) on wheel popularly called “Mobile BTS” to boost the temporary network resource demand for such events. A mobile BTS is a special BTS mounted on wheels and usually taken to an area to provide temporary GSM coverage. By deploying Mobile BTS, Zain is providing effective coverage for the duration of the festivals.

Planning temporary coverage for these festivals is a serious task as it demands extensive technical and logistics resource planning. In the past Zain maintained a tabular spreadsheet of these festivals, however it was decided that tracking them in a GIS environment would provide a dramatic improvement over the traditional technique and further empower Zain to plan for these festivals in a consistent and efficient manner

STL was contracted to create a GIS-base solution that will include a database of over 120 festivals and special events across Nigeria which would be required to plan coverage for the festivals. This project involved extensive GPS mapping across several cities and villages in Nigeria. Relevant attribution table was developed and the digital pictures of the festival venues were hotlinked using MapInfo Professional to provide contextual relevance.

STL’s expertise was evident from the speed and accuracy of data gathering which resulted in meeting the 1month project delivery deadline.
According to Ireti Ajala, (CEO of STL), “We are delighted at the prospect of partnering with a world class mobile telecom company like Zain Nigeria in using the compelling visual power of GIS to plan GSM coverage for these festivals. We were selected for this project on the strength of our experience at delivering projects of such magnitude and complexity”.

ABOUT STL
STL is Nigeria’s foremost mapping and GIS consulting company with offices in Lagos and UK. We specialize in developing geospatial databases and solutions about Nigeria for the Nigerian market. STL has extensive experience in collecting and processing data from geographic information sources as digitized maps, satellite imageries and aerial data. STL is the proud recipient of the prestigious RIMA Foundation Award for the best GIS solution provider in Nigeria.
STL is the owner of www.mapntl.com and www.lagoslocation.com Nigeria’s first and most extensive online location-base portals providing important services such as online street finder for Lagos, business location finder, map-based Real Estate search and online driving direction.

For more details contact:
Spatial Technologies Ltd
Phone: 01-8533497 (Lagos), +447982996752 (UK)
Email: Email Contact
Website: www.spatialtechnologiesltd.com

ABOUT ZAIN GROUP
Zain is a leading emerging markets player in the field of telecommunications aiming to become one of the top ten mobile operators in the world by 2011. Today it is the 4th largest mobile network in the world in terms of geographical footprint with commercial presence in 24 countries spread across the Middle East and Africa providing mobile voice and data services to 64.7 million active customers as at 31 March 2009.
Zain operates in the following countries: Bahrain, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia