Zain Sudan, a prominent mobile service provider in Sudan, with 23 million customers, faced a challenging situation when the country was engulfed in a civil war in early 2024. This conflict led to a nationwide mobile connectivity blackout, leaving millions of Sudanese citizens without essential communication and mobile money services. Unfortunately, Zain Sudan, along with two other major mobile network operators, was unable to restore these services promptly, resulting in a 40-day blackout period that left communities isolated and vulnerable.
The crisis impacted millions of people across urban and rural areas, disrupting economic transactions and access to emergency services. With mobile wallets being a primary financial tool for many Sudanese, the blackout exacerbated financial instability, highlighting the critical need for swift resolution. Zain Sudan’s existing infrastructure, managed by an incumbent vendor, projected a lengthy timeline of six to nine months to restore connectivity. This delay underscored the vulnerabilities in their on-premise infrastructure, including high costs and limited flexibility for disaster recovery.
To address these challenges, Zain Sudan turned to Totogi for a solution that could rapidly restore services, ensure business continuity, reduce operational costs, and comply with local regulations in a volatile environment. Totogi’s innovative cloud-native charging platform offered a promising opportunity to achieve these objectives.
Within just 18 days of signing the contract with Totogi, Zain Sudan successfully restored its services to over 20 million subscribers, showcasing the efficiency and speed of Totogi’s cloud-native approach. By leveraging Totogi’s true SaaS platform built on AWS, Zain Sudan could bypass logistical challenges and swiftly deploy essential mobile services to meet the urgent needs of the Sudanese population.
Totogi’s AI-powered Charging-as-a-Service solution played a crucial role in the process, providing a modern, productized approach that enabled rapid onboarding of subscribers and efficient deployment of essential services. The platform’s multi-tenant architecture supported seamless scaling, while its pay-by-the-use pricing model ensured affordability and flexibility for Zain Sudan.
The collaboration between Zain Sudan and Totogi not only restored critical services but also modernized Zain’s BSS stack, ensuring resilience in the face of future challenges. By providing unmatched speed, scalability, and resilience, Totogi empowered Zain Sudan to effectively meet urgent humanitarian needs, setting a new standard for crisis response in the telecom industry.
Emad Elsheikh, Zain’s CTO, praised Totogi for their innovative technology and unwavering commitment, highlighting the significant financial and operational benefits delivered through the partnership. The successful implementation of Totogi’s cloud-native solution not only restored network operations and revenue generation for Zain Sudan but also had a profound impact on the lives of millions of Sudanese people by reconnecting them with vital communication services and resources.
Moreover, the transition to Totogi’s platform resulted in a substantial reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) for Zain Sudan, as well as a significant decrease in carbon emissions due to the use of renewable energy by AWS. This implementation set a new standard for resilience in operations under extreme conditions, demonstrating the transformative power of cutting-edge technology in addressing urgent humanitarian needs during national crises.
