Bharti Tele-Ventures, India's leading telecommunications conglomerate has chosen Nokia to expand its GSM/GPRS network in a deal worth approximately 275 million USD, projected for the next three years for the supply of equipment and managed services. Nokia will supply both core and GSM/EDGE radio network equipment to build or upgrade Bharti's networks in five "telecom circles" in a deal which includes the full management of Bharti's network by Nokia. Bharti currently serves more than seven million customers under the brand name AirTel.
Under a two-year agreement, Nokia will supply equipment to modernize AirTel's existing circles in Mumbai, Maharashtra (including Goa), and Gujarat. Nokia has not previously supplied networks to AirTel in these circles. In addition, Nokia will deploy new networks for AirTel in Bihar, Jharkhand, and Orissa states.
The deployment will boost network capacity up to five-fold, providing reduced congestion, seamless coverage and enhanced quality across the five circles, including the important commercial hubs of Mumbai, Maharashtra and Gujarat. As part of the contract, Nokia will continuously deliver equipment and services based on Bharti's capacity requirements, securing a cost-efficient rollout of on-demand capacity.
In addition, Nokia and Bharti have signed a three-year service contract for network deployment, maintenance and managed services in all five circles. As part of this contract, Bharti will outsource its network management and maintenance activities to Nokia, including the transfer of a number of Bharti employees.
"Our agreement with Nokia is a major step forward in aligning the interest of the operator and the vendor partner," said Mr. Manoj Kohli, President - Mobility, Bharti Tele- Ventures Ltd., announcing the initiative. "This shall enable us to have world class state of art network, wider coverage and significantly improved quality of service on one hand while giving us economies of scale and significantly improved cash flows on the other."
"Nokia is proud to collaborate with Bharti, India's leading mobile operator, on this significant network expansion exercise," said Mr. Ashish Chowdhary, Country Head, India & South Asia, Networks, Nokia. "We feel that this deployment will enable Bharti to offer world-class network quality and services to its end consumers."
"This deal underscores Nokia's commitment to India, fulfilling our promise to bring high-quality equipment and advanced services to India's mobile world," added Mr. Chowdhary. "And we congratulate Bharti on its innovative approach to the provisioning of mobile services in this country."
"Managed services are today playing an increasingly important role for operators globally," said Jyrki Holmala, Vice President & General Manager, Nokia Operations Solutions, Networks, Nokia. "By providing managed services to its customers, Nokia helps operators to achieve further OPEX savings and move away from the day-to-day operations of their networks to focus on serving their own customers."
Nokia will provide installation, system integration and an extensive range of care services including, emergency support, software maintenance and training to maintain the competitiveness of Bharti's networks. The services will be provided using Nokia NetAct(TM), the only fully-featured, multi-vendor, multi-technology operations support system on a single platform. In addition, Nokia will provide spare part management service for multi-vendor hardware.
In addition to a full GSM/GPRS system, Nokia and AirTel plan to deploy EDGE technology (Enhanced Data Rate for Global Evolution), voice quality enhancers and dual band networks (GSM 900/1800). With EDGE, AirTel customers can experience faster data transfer rates when compared with competing wireless technologies while enjoying the full potential of advanced mobile Internet services such streaming videos and other Internet based multimedia services.
About Nokia
A market leader in the cellular industry in Asia Pacific, Nokia provides innovative, industry leading and market-relevant technology and products to around 20 diverse markets in the region.
Nokia is the world leader in mobile communications, driving the growth and sustainability of the broader mobility industry. Nokia is dedicated to enhancing people's lives and productivity by providing easy-to-use and secure products like mobile phones, and solutions for imaging, games, media, mobile network operators and businesses. Nokia is a broadly held company with listings on five major exchanges.
About Bharti
Bharti Tele-Ventures is India's leading private sector provider of telecommunications services with an aggregate of 7.6 million customers as of end of April 2004, consisting of over 7 million mobile customers. The Company today offers mobile services in sixteen out of 23 circles in India. The Company also provides fixed - line services in 5 circles.
The company complements its mobile and fixed-line services with national and international long distance services. The company also has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai, which connects the submarine cable connecting Chennai and Singapore. The company provides reliable end-to-end data and enterprise services including VSAT and Internet services to the corporate customers by leveraging its nationwide fibre optic backbone, last mile connectivity in fixed-line and mobile circles, VSATs, ISP and international bandwidth access through the gateways and landing station. For more information, visit www.bhartiteleventures.com.
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