Nokia, India's Bharti Airtel in $400 mln network deal

Bharti Airtel Limited has awarded Nokia a USD 400 mln contract to expand its managed GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks in eight Airtel circles and deploy a pan-Indian WAP solution across its networks.

As per the three-year contract, Nokia will provide managed services and expand Airtel networks to cover all towns and cities in the eight telecom circles of Mumbai, MaharashtraÂ and Goa, Gujarat, Bihar (including Jharkhand), Orissa, Kolkata, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh (including Chattisgarh).

Nokia will also deploy its WAP solution across Airtel’s national network to enhance the operator’s mobile packet core network capabilities.

In the past two years, Nokia has signed two contracts worth USD 400 mln with Bharti for the supply of equipment and managed services.

Bharti Airtel is one of India’s leading private sector providers of telecom services with 25.89 mln customers of which 24.34 mln are mobile customers. The company was the first private operator to provide mobile services in all the 23 circles in India and also provides telephone services and Internet access over DSL in 92 cities. The company also has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai, which connects the submarine cable (owned by an associate company) connecting Chennai and Singapore, and is part of the consortium, which jointly owns and has developed the next generation undersea cable system SEA-ME-WE-4.