NEW DELHI: Ericsson has bagged a two-year 4G network deployment contract from Idea Cellular, the third largest mobile services operator in India, for Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, North East and Himachal Pradesh telecom circles. The gear maker will transform the telco’s existing mobile radio access and core network infrastructure across nine circles for 2G and five circles for 3G.
Under the contract, Ericsson will provide equipment, software and a range of professional services, including project management, systems integration and supervisory managed services for 4GLTE in these four circles. It will install its multi-standard RBS 6000 radio base station, which supports GSM/EDGE, WCDMA/HSPA and LTE in a single cabinet and upgrade core network and operations support systems (OSS).
The LTE deployment by Ericsson will cover over 40 million subscribers in these telecom circles.
Idea Cellular recently awarded 4G network deployment contract for Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Orissa circles to Chinese telecom equipment vendor Huawei, ET earlier reported.
“We are committed to offering our customers the best possible mobile experience. Transforming our 2G and 3G network will enable us to offer optimized mobile data and better smartphone performance, while our LTE deployments will take the customer experience on Idea Cellular’s networks to the next level,” Himanshu Kapania, CEO, Idea Cellular, said in the joint statement.
“Ericsson’s technology and services leadership will enable Idea Cellular to transform their 2G and 3G networks and to roll out an LTE network that delivers superior broadband experiences,” Paolo Colella, Head of Region India, Ericsson, said.
The Aditya Birla Group company is rapidly rolling out 4G networks in various circles to better compete with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India, which have their 4G networks running in the country.
In December 2015, Idea Cellular launched 4G LTE services in all 4 telecom circles (5 states) of South India, namely Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, and Karnataka. Earlier this month, the telecom operator with over 170 million subscribers launched services across 4 more circles (5 Indian states) – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Punjab and Odisha, expanding its 4G LTE service footprint to 8 telecom service areas.