Bharti finalises $150 m pact with 3 major suppliers

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, AUG. 28. Bharti Enterprises, one of the leading telecom conglomerates, has announced the finalisation of $150 million agreements with three major telecom equipment suppliers. This equipment will be required to carry forward Bharti's recent announcement on a strategic roadmap to become one of the largest players in India in mobile services.

According to a company announcement, Bharti has finalised agreements with Ericsson, Siemens and Motorola, adding up to a total of $150 million which is the largest order of its kind to date by any Indian telecom operator.

The expansion of Bharti's cellular services network will be implemented at all its regional hubs and some of its existing circles. While some of the existing networks will be scaled up with the expansion, the newly acquired circles will be set up to match the existing level of network quality. The expansion will lead the existing networks to the level of 2.5G technology and will bring to the Indian market a slew of new products. The expansion will take place over the next four months.

According to the agreement, Ericsson will provide complete end-to-end infrastructure, intelligent network (IN) architecture, base stations and GPRS to the operations in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (West), Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as some of the existing circles, including expansion in Chennai.

Motorola will provide switches, IN networks and base stations in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Gujarat circles while Siemens will provide end-to-end infrastructure, IN architecture, base stations and GPRS equipment to the Madhya Pradesh circle and expansion in Kolkata.

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