In a Rs 3,350 crore ($500 million) worth deal, India’ top telecom operator Airtel has awarded Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson to manage its network across India. Under the three-year contract, Ericsson will be managing Airtel’s 4G LTE, 3G and 2G networks covering all 22 telecom circles across the country.
Under the agreement, Ericsson will be responsible for field maintenance, network operations, network optimization and passive maintenance of Airtel-owned sites. The company will also be managing over 1,50,000 physical sites and 1,50,000 logical sites owned by Airtel.
By this agreement, Ericsson has become Airtel’s pan-Indian network vendor for managed services. The company also provide managed services to Reliance Communications (RCom) on a seven-year contract.
Earlier Airtel signed a deal with Nokia for its 4G deployment across nine telecom circles in India. Under this deal, Nokia will deploy its 4G FDD-LTE and TD-LTE technology across all these telecom circles.