NEW DELHI, India—The government-owned fixed-line operator, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), awarded Ericsson and Motorola contracts to build out its GSM network. BSNL is slated to launch a nationwide GSM service next year, with a projected 4 million-line capacity.
Ericsson has won a US$135 million contract from BSNL for the supply of 1 million GSM lines. The contract is for the north zone, which comprises the telecom circles of Uttar Pradesh (East and West), Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. It covers supply, implementation and support of core GSM infrastructure along with microwave equipment, billing, customer care solutions, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and unified messaging.
Motorola signed a separate US$178 million GSM contract to supply infrastructure equipment in four states in southern India. The agreement for a total turnkey 900 MHz GSM network includes base stations, switches, intelligent network, billing platform, turnkey services and project management, as well as terminal devices and subscriber identity module (SIM) cards, according to Motorola.
Another contract is to be awarded in two other zones—west and east. Besides Ericsson and Motorola, Alcatel is also in the race.
BSNL operates 30 million fixed-line phones. If BSNL launches its GSM service as planned, it will be the largest GSM operator in the country. Two private operators currently compete in each telecom circle, while licenses for the third players were recently awarded. The total number of subscribers is about 4 million. BSNL will be the fourth operator in all telecom circles, except New Delhi and Mumbai, where another state-owned company, MTNL, is the fourth operator.
