Bharti Airtel awards NSN US$700 million expansion contract

India’s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, has awarded Nokia Siemens Network a US$700 million network expansion contract. The vendor will expand and upgrade Airtel’s 2.5G network to increase network capacity by 50 per cent in eight telecommunications circles.

The GSM expansion will cover the circles of Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand, Orissa, Kolkata and West Bengal, where Nokia Siemens Networks already provides equipment and managed services for the telco. With almost 60 percent of Airtel’s monthly customers coming from rural regions, this contract will enable it to further aggressively expand its footprint into rural India.

“This expansion will not only expand our networks deeper into the rural hinterland but will also allow us to deliver a rich end-user experience, and satisfy the increasing demand for top-quality services,” said Sanjay Kapoor, chief executive officer designate, Bharti Airtel.

NSN’S contract includes network planning, implementation and project management, handling of local logistics and materials, as well as system integration for the base station sites. In addition, the company will ensure that the operator’s core and transport network is 3G-ready in order to reduce time to market and enable the fast rollout of 3G services at a later date.

Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is among Asia’s leading integrated telecom services providers with operations in India and Sri Lanka, and in January it gained the approval to acquire 70 per cent of Warid Bangladesh. In South Asia, the company had an aggregate of over 125.3 million customers as of end-December 2009, including 120.23 million mobile customers.