Nokia-Siemens: $900M Indian Contract
Nokia-Siemens: $900M Indian Contract
Nokia Siemens Networks won a $900 million contract from India’s largest mobile phone operator, Bharti Airtel, to help expand its communications network, both companies said Tuesday.
Under the two-year, 660 million euro contract, Nokia Siemens Networks will install 1.8 million ports and also set up an international calling card prepaid service that will help the Indian company add 4.5 million new customers.
The two year GSM expansion will cover the eight existing circles of Mumbai, Maharashtra & Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh & Chattisgarh, Bihar & Jharkhand, Orissa, Kolkata and West Bengal.
Nokia Siemens, a joint venture between Finland’s Nokia and Germany’s Siemens, will help Bharti Airtel to expand in eight of the nation’s 23 service zones.
Over the past year, India has emerged the world’s fastest growing mobile phone market, adding nearly 6 million new connections every month.
In May, Nokia Siemens won a similar contract valued at $500 million from another leading Indian mobile phone company — Mumbai-based Idea Cellular.
On Monday, Nokia Siemens said it would invest $100 million to build a manufacturing plant for wireless network equipment in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and expand its research center in the city of Bangalore.
In the largest deployment of WiMAX anywhere in the world, state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) will soon float a tender to offer wireless broadband service in 1,000 cities across the country.
Globally, WiMAX, termed a disruptive technology by Business Week, is undergoing over 200 trials and deployed at some 40 locations commercially. It has forced mobile service providers worldwide to start trials, marrying GSM/3G cellular service with WiMAX.
Sources said BSNL is awaiting the final policy announcement by India’s Department of Telecommunications. It hopes to finalise the tender by July so that deployment can begin by September. The plan would install some 1,000 basestations in a mix of non-line of sight (NLOS) and line of sight (LOS).
BSNL has some 47 million basic POTs subscribers, 20 Million GSM subscribers and more than 37,000 fixed exchanges. From a base of 0.27 million WiMAX and pre-WiMAX subscribers in 2006, Research and Markets expects total WiMAX subscribers to reach 31.43 million by 2012 in 16 Asia/Pacific countries.