In its drive to expand telecom services both in mobile and fixed line segments, Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] on Tuesday awarded a $900 million contract to Nokia Siemens to deploy equipments in various circles in which it operates.The two-year GSM expansion programme will cover the company's eight existing circles of Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand, Orissa, Kolkata and West Bengal, where Nokia Siemens Networks already provides equipment and managed services.
The memorandum of partnership was signed between Bharti Airtel President and CEO Manoj Kohli and Nokia Siemens Networks CEO Simon Beresford Wylie.
Commenting on the partnership Kohli said: "Bharti Airtel is undertaking a massive expansion and integration exercise across its mobile and fixed networks to significantly augment its service delivery capacity. Today's comprehensive network expansion contract is a reflection of this vision."
For the two-year fixed network expansion, Nokia Siemens will deploy 1.8 million Next Generation Networks ports across Airtel's National Long Distance and International Long Distance networks.
"We are honoured to be awarded this first of its kind end-to-end network expansion contract by Bharti Airtel," Wylie said adding this would enable Bharti Airtel to tap new market opportunities driven by convergence, optimise network performance and costs and continue to grow market share.
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