Tech Telecom

Bharti Airtel, the country’s leading telecom operator, has awarded a big-ticket 4G deployment and expansion contract worth around $500 million to Finnish telecom gear vendor Nokia.

Under this contract, Bharti Airtel is expediting its network expansion and ramping up capacities to counter the looming threat from Reliance Jio, which is currently offering free services in the country.

“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,” Sanjay Malik, Head of India Market at Nokia said in a statement.

“This network expansion will provide the capacity, coverage and speed the company needs to meet the next wave of data demand in India,” he said.

Nokia will deploy its available 4G network technologies across nine of Bharti Airtel’s circles in India including the regions of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rest of Bengal, Odisha, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Kerala and UP East, the statement said.

This coverage expansion will also include major cities such as Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Patna and Siliguri.

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

Both Bharti Airtel and Nokia did not comment on the value of the deal. With this Nokia will see Airtel expand the deployment of 4G technology in three new circles in addition to six circles it already serves, enabling launch of new services that started in September.

“Nokia will also expand the operator’s 3G network in eight of the territories as part of this rollout and modernization of legacy 2G BTS,” the statement said.

Agreement between Nokia and Bharti Airtel will enhance coverage and access in urban, suburban and rural areas within nine circles in India, it added.

The 4G rollout uses Nokia’s radio access with Single RAN technology for FDD-LTE and TD-LTE. The gear vendor said that it will provide professional services including network integration and network planning and optimization.

To address this growth, Bharti Airtel has recently acquired 173.8 Mhz spectrum across three spectrum bands that include 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2300 MHz for a total of Rs 14, 244 crores, in the recently concluded spectrum sale by the government.