India’s RCom awards $1bn deal to Ericsson
February 11, 2013, 3:04 pm

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RCom announced on Monday that it has outsourced operations and management of its network in northern and western India to Ericsson.

The eight-year agreement is valued at $1 billion, a joint statement by the two companies said.

Five thousand employees from RCom will join Ericsson, according to the statement.

“Given the complexity of network increasing with platforms, technologies and application offerings, we are banking on the experience, innovation and technical expertise of Ericsson to improve the productivity of our network,” said Gurdeep Singh, RCom’s chief executive officer for wireless business.

Ericsson will manage the day to day operations across wireline and wireless networks and will take over responsibility for field maintenance, network operations and operational planning of RCom 2G, CDMA and 3G mobile networks, it added.

“With this partnership, Reliance will increase focus on their core business and innovation. We are pleased to welcome more than 5,000 employees who will join us from Reliance Communications,”  said Magnus Mandersson, Ericsson’s executive vice president and head of business unit global services.

The partnership will allow RCom to free up resources to focus on user experience, as well as improving innovation power and speed across the specified geographies, the statement said.

Reliance awarded another $1 billion services contract to French phone-equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA last month.

RCom infrastructure covers 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages in India to which it offers converged services including voice, data and video, added the statment.

Source: Agencies