Bharti Airtel awards $1 bn contract to Ericsson

New Delhi, Aug 24: Bharti Airtel today said it has signed a one billion dollar, three-year network expansion contract with Ericsson, to further expand its mobile services footprint and reach out to all towns and cities in 15 telecom circles in the country.

The contract is towards the design, planning, supply and installation commissioning of Airtel networks in these circles.

Ericsson will also upgrade the network with supply of next generation equipments like Media Gateway and MSC Server. With this Bharti expects to reduce the operational costs and introduce new services in a cost-efficient way.

The scope of the agreement extends to the 15 Airtel circles of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, UP (West), Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, UP (East), Jammu and Kashmir, Asom and North East.

''Our partnership with Ericsson allows us to focus on delivering better customer experience even as we leverage the world class expertise of our partners to roll out our networks across all census towns by March 2007. In addition, we are also sourcing next generation products that will allow us to deliver innovative products and services to our customers,'' Bharti Airtel President Manoj Kohli said.

The mobile major together with Microsoft recently launched Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 platform on cellphones, which will offer mobile users the same Windows interface that they are used to on their PC.

''Our partnership with Bharti Airtel resulted in the first managed services contract in the industry. Speed of roll-outs plays an extremely important role in large expansions of this nature.

Ericsson has demonstrated expertise in this area,'' said Ericsson India Managing Director Mats Granryd.

Bharti Airtel Ltd is one of India's leading private sector providers of telecommunications services with an aggregate of 25.89 million customers as of end of July 2006, consisting of 24.34 million mobile customers.

The company also provides telephone services and internet access over DSL in 92 cities.

UNI