Airtel signs a 4G contract worth $500 million with Nokia

Bhart Airtel, the nation’s largest telecom operator, has awarded the Finnish telecom gear vendor Nokia a 4G deployment and expansion contract of nearly $500 million.

As per this agreement, Bharti Airtel is speeding up its system development and increasing 4G abilities to counter the danger from Reliance Jio Infocomm, say analyts.

The new concurrence with Nokia will see Airtel convey 4G technology in three new circles of Gujarat, Bihar, and UP (East). Also, the order involves development of existing 4G capacities in six circles of Mumbai, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Punjab and Kerala.

Both Nokia and Airtel have still not shared the value of the contract. The approximate value, though, was told to be around $500 million by a person familiar with the development.

The new deployment will allow Airtel to provide improved coverage and faster mobile internet access, while laying the foundation for the delivery of enhanced video services and other on demand applications.

"We are pleased to continue to leverage Nokia's leading radio access technology and services expertise to expand 4G capacity and coverage and increase the quality of service for subscribers,” Airtel said in a statement.

Nokia also said that under this contract, it will be expaaniding Airtel’s 3G network in eight of the territories as part of this roll out and modernization of legacy 2G base stations.

"We have a long history of working with Bharti Airtel and with this latest agreement we have become the largest supplier of 4G for the company.

The 4G roll out uses Nokia's radio access with Single RAN tech for FDDLTE and TD-LTE. The gear vendor said it will provide professional services including network integration and network planning and optimization.
(Image: Indiatimes)