Nokia software is helping build a smart city about 60km from Cairo that is set to become Egypt’s new administrative capital.

The Nokia AVA software has been selected to support Orange and the Administrative Capital for Urban Development (ACUD), which is building the smart capital city.

Nokia’s AVA OSS/BSS software will allow ACUD smart city dwellers to use the internet to order, activate and pay for utilities. The AVA products, including operations and monetisation software, will be used by the ACUD to enable customers to order, activate and pay for utilities and data centre services.

Deployment of Nokia’s software is part of the service provider-as-a-partner (SPaaP) collaboration with Orange Egypt and Orange Business Services. The deployment is expected to be completed this year. The software will help ACUD deliver IoT use cases to residential and enterprise users.

ACUD is a smart city being developed about 60km outside Cairo. The city is envisioned to reach up to seven million inhabitants in the next ten years. It will have around 2.5 million IoT devices and the largest certified tiered data centre in Africa.

Egypt’s new administrative capital should let users benefit from an end-to-end online cycle for procuring, activating and payment for utilities, internet and data centre services for enterprise subscribers.

The installation includes Nokia Converged Charging, Mediation & Digital Operations software. The AVA software will help ACUD manage data centre services to enterprises, IoT services, and wholesale connectivity for residential and enterprise users.

“Our vision is to build a smart city for a smarter future in the new capital,” said Khaled Abbas, managing director of ACUD. “We wanted reliable technology partners to build the city’s digital infrastructure that will have far-reaching positive impact on our people’s lives. So, our clear choice was the global technology leaders, Orange and Nokia, for this mega project.”

Hesham Mahran, chief business officer for Orange in Egypt, added: “We are honoured to be part of Egypt 2030 vision, building and operating a state-of-the-art fully secured data centre that serves ACUD smart city services, building on Orange’s worldwide expertise as a master systems integrator and worldwide best practices for similar projects. Nokia is our longstanding partner, and its best-in-class software will allow us to efficiently deliver exceptional services helping ACUD’s vision in building a smart sustainable city.”

And Hani Adel, head of Nokia’s customer business team, said: “This project with ACUD and Orange is an opportunity to build digital infrastructure for a smarter future for Cairo.”

The Nokia software is complemented by Cerillion’s BSS product suite, which provides an open and standards-based offering coupled with its experienced delivery team for retail and wholesale.

“Building a new smart city from the ground up provides the opportunity to future proof its infrastructure and services for many years to come, using the latest digital BSS/OSS,” said Louis Hall, CEO of Cerillion. “This is another great example of how our products can be configured to support an enormous range and diversity of services and we are delighted to be working with Nokia on this exciting and revolutionary project.”

Founded in 1999, Cerillion provides billing, charging and customer management systems across a broad range of industries including the telecommunications, finance and utilities sectors. The company has a global customer base, with around 80 customer installations across 45 countries. Customers include Liberty Global, KDDI and Proximus.