Reliance Communications [Get Quote] (RCom) is awarding a nationwide GSM rollout contract to China-based telecom company Huawei Technologies. The contract is estimated at Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion).

The equipment contract is for the company's nationwide global system for mobile communications rollout. More contracts such contracts for various equipment categories are expected to be signed in the next couple of weeks.

RCom plans to give a GSM equipment order of 80-100 million lines, the largest by an operator in the country. BSNL recently ordered 22.5 million GSM lines a few months ago.    

Under its GSM rollout plans, RCom plans to invest over Rs 6,000 crore (Rs 60 billion) in GSM electronics alone. When contacted, a RCom spokesperson declined to comment.

RCom had recently received spectrum in 13 circles under the new cross over technology policy, in which a code division multiple access operator can also operate GSM services with the same licence. IT operates GSM in the remaining circles.

Huawei Technologies successfully helped MTNL [Get Quote] -- the country's second largest operator -- to deploy its multi protocol label switching backbone network, thus providing Indian users with a variety of quality carrier-class services including Internet, VoIP and IpTV.

RCom holds 60 per cent share of the CDMA market, which stands at 61 million as on December 2007. It enjoys a 30-35 per cent market share in the circles where it currently offers both CDMA and GSM services.

The launch of GSM services would also enable RCom to harness substantial economies of scale in the back-end network and front-end customer interface infrastructure.