Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), India Govt owned telecom operator had made a deal with Chinese telecoms gearmaker ZTE Corp to support 10.15 million 2G and 3G GSM lines in the country. The major benefit for BSNL with this deal is to improve quality and expand its GSM network capacity, thus increasing its subscriber base.
ZTE by this deal will supply equipment for 10.15 million 2G and 3G GSM lines for BSNL in the north and south telecom circles. ZTE will also help in plan, finance, engineer, supply, install, test, commission and maintain these lines under the contract for a period of three years. With this new gear in place BSNL plans to expand network and improve quality of services in these regions, which they have been losing to the private telecom players.
Cui Liangjun, ZTE India’s CEO said, “We are excited to partner with BSNL to support their ambitious growth plans in North and South India. We are confident that this association will help BSNL to offer competitive mobile communications that can meet the present and future telecommunication needs, and help ZTE boost its business in the Indian sub-continent.”
There are also speculation that Indian Govt officials are not happy with this deal as a Chinese vendor handling the main incumbent operator’s network may cause security issues. Recently only it was found that Chinese hackers tying to steal sensitive information for Indian Naval base in Visakhapatnam.
Anyway with this deal BSNL can provide better service for customers in the north and south telecom circles where customers where facing regular network issues. Also if BSNL can do better in sales and customer support, then they can become one of India’s top telecom provider within short span of time.