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Ericsson has won a 3-year contract from Indian mobile operator Airtel. The deal is worth USD up to USD 500 million (INR 33.5 billion), ET reports, citing unnamed people with knowledge of the matter. Under the terms of the deal, Ericsson will manage Airtel’s 2G, 3G and 4G LTE networks in all the 22 circles of the country. Ericsson has renewed its partnership with Airtel in 15 telecom circles where it was already providing managed services. It has now also won the deal to manage Airtel’s networks in the rest of the circles, which were earlier being managed by Nokia.
Ericsson will assume responsibility for field maintenance, network operations, network optimisation and passive maintenance for Airtel-owned sites and manage over 150,000 physical sites, along with 150,000 logical sites across the country.
According to one of the sources, both Airtel and Ericsson are discussing the final details of the deal. “Ericsson is likely to take over from Nokia in new circles around December-January”, the source said. Airtel and Ericsson declined comment on the matter.
