Alcatel-Lucent has won a contract with Etisalat Nigeria that enables the African operator to launch a new permission-based mobile marketing service.

The service is based on A-L's Optism solution, which allows subscribers to receive personalised adverts and offers from their favourite brands on their mobile phones.

Chief commercial officer of Etisalat Nigeria, Wael Ammar, said: "Optism is enabling us to achieve a number of exciting and important objectives.

"First, we are bringing the power of permission-based mobile advertising to the Nigerian market with our EasyAdz service. This simply means that we will provide customers with advertising content relevant to their specific locations and choices."

Etisalat Nigeriam, which has 13 million subscribers, trialled the new service at the beginning of the year and said that more than 800,000 users chose to participate.

Amr El-Leithy, head of Alcatel-Lucent's business in the Middle East and Africa, said: "After a successful launch of Optism in the UAE it is extremely gratifying to have another member of the group choose our solution for permission-based mobile marketing."

Last month, A-L revealed it had made a loss of €243 million in Q2 and launched a new cost reduction programme aimed saving an additional €750 million.

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