Zain Sudan is a mobile service provider in Sudan, serving 23 million customers. It is a subsidiary of Zain Group, a leading mobile and data services operator in the Middle East and North Africa.
The problem:
In early 2024, Sudan was plunged into an escalating civil war that triggered a nationwide mobile connectivity blackout. This left millions of Sudanese citizens without access to critical communication or mobile money services, deepening the humanitarian and economic crisis. Three of the country’s MNOs, including Zain Sudan, were unable to restore these services, leaving communities isolated and vulnerable during a 40-day blackout period.
The crisis was monumental in scale, affecting dozens of millions across urban and rural regions. With mobile wallets serving as the primary financial tool for a significant portion of the population, the blackout disrupted economic transactions and exacerbated financial instability. The inability to communicate further hindered access to emergency services and humanitarian aid, compounding the challenges faced by the people of Sudan.
Zain’s incumbent vendor projected a six to nine-month timeline to restore connectivity, citing the need to ship and install hardware at a new data center, deploy engineers to manage the setup, and implement the software. This highlighted the vulnerabilities in Zain’s existing on-premise infrastructure, including high costs for disaster recovery and limited flexibility.
Zain needed a solution that could rapidly restore services, ensure business continuity, and significantly reduce operational costs, all while maintaining compliance with local regulations in a volatile environment.
The solution:
Faced with the urgency of restoring mobile connectivity in a much faster timeline, Zain Sudan approached Totogi to explore how a public cloud-native charging can go live fast and ensure resilient and safe connectivity.
Just 18 days after signing the contract, Totogi successfully restored Zain’s services to its customers, showcasing the power of its innovative, cloud-native approach.
At the core of the solution was Totogi’s true SaaS platform, built on AWS. Unlike traditional setups that depend on hardware housed in local data centers, Totogi’s architecture leveraged the scalability and flexibility of the public cloud. This enabled Zain Sudan to bypass the physical and logistical challenges posed by the crisis, ensuring swift deployment of essential mobile services.
The process involved migrating Zain Sudan’s mobile services to the public cloud, establishing a robust and scalable communication network. Totogi’s AI-powered Charging-as-a-Service solution played a pivotal role, offering a modern, productized SaaS approach. Its out-of-the-box functionality and easy configurability allowed Zain Sudan to rapidly onboard over 20 million subscribers, setting a new standard for speed and efficiency in crisis response.
Totogi’s solution is designed to adapt in real-time to unforeseen challenges, eliminating the need for costly hardware, lengthy customization cycles, and extensive professional services. Its multi-tenant architecture supports seamless scaling, while its pay-by-the-use pricing model ensures affordability. By enabling continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), Totogi ensures ongoing innovation and immediate deployment of new features, keeping the system agile and up-to-date.
For Zain Sudan, Totogi’s technology not only restored critical services but also modernized its BSS stack to withstand future challenges. By providing unmatched speed, scalability, and resilience, Totogi empowered Zain Sudan to meet urgent humanitarian needs effectively, redefining the role of telecom services during emergencies.
Challenges involved with implementation and how these were overcome:
Restoring Zain Sudan’s mobile connectivity in just 18 days required overcoming significant challenges, including 24/7 operations, cross-border collaboration, and infrastructure limitations. The team worked tirelessly across multiple time zones, leveraging real-time tools and agile workflows to maintain momentum. By applying the 80-20 rule, they prioritized core functionalities and tasks that would deliver the greatest results, ensuring rapid deployment.
Instead of relying on traditional data centers, Totogi used its cloud-native SaaS platform on AWS to bypass logistical hurdles, enabling fast, scalable, and resilient service restoration. AI-driven automation further expedited onboarding, demonstrating how the combination of innovative thinking and technology can drive critical solutions in times of crisis.
The result:
Emad Elsheikh, Zain CTO, said: “Partnering with Totogi allowed us to not only navigate this crisis but also emerge stronger, keeping our customers connected and operations uninterrupted. Totogi’s innovative technology, combined with an unwavering commitment from their team, has been pivotal in connecting people across Sudan when they needed it the most.
“Transitioning over 20 million subscribers to Totogi’s platform was executed with remarkable speed and efficiency, showcasing the agility and effectiveness of their solution in managing large-scale subscriber bases under demanding conditions, particularly in times of crisis when traditional on-prem systems are likely to fail.”
The Zain Sudan / Totogi collaboration delivered both financial and operational benefits. Totogi’s efforts restored network operations, allowing Zain to resume revenue generation while enhancing the customer experience with profound human impact. It was not just about re-establishing connectivity but restoring the lifelines of communication, commerce, and hope for millions.
Millions of Sudanese people regained access to critical communication services, mobile money, and emergency resources. This took them from complete isolation — unable to make calls, send messages, or access mobile wallets — to regaining vital connections with family, businesses, and emergency services. New subscribers could be activated in record time compared to traditional methods, helping non Zain customers access communication services as well as existing customers.
Local businesses could operate again, ensuring livelihoods were protected, and emergency services could once more reach those in need. Regulatory compliance was also swiftly reinstated, ensuring uninterrupted service in the future.
During the blackout, Zain Sudan was losing approximately $12 million per week. Once the Totogi system went live, Zain recouped half of this loss. Compared to the 6 month timeline suggested by the incumbent vendor, this is close to 100m USD revenue generated, recovering the company’s financial outlook.
By migrating charging environments to the cloud, the need for hardware, infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance was virtually eliminated, resulting in a reduction in its total cost of ownership (TCO) by around 76%. Furthermore, disaster recovery expenses – previously a significant cost – were reduced to a fraction thanks to the inherent resilience and scalability of the public cloud.
Another significant value of moving to the cloud was the reduction of carbon emissions by 96%, using 100% renewable energy by AWS.
This implementation set a new standard for resilience in operations under extreme conditions. Totogi’s Charging-as-a-Service went live and restored connectivity for Zain and its customers just 18 days from project initiation, compared to 12 – 24 months for similar solutions. Totogi’s technology demonstrated how cutting-edge innovation could meet urgent humanitarian needs, offering a beacon of resilience in the face of a national crisis and transforming the lives of the communities it serves.
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