More than 6 million new Indian mobile phone subscribers are signing up every month which means that operators are recruiting third-party suppliers to help them expand their infrastructure at a fast enough rate to meet demand.
Bharti, which is India’s largest mobile operator with more than 40 million subscribers, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nokia Siemens for the infrastructure and services supplier to expand its mobile, fixed, and intelligent network platforms.
Specifically, Nokia Siemens will expand Airtel’s GSM network in eight circles, its national long-distance and international long-distance network with 1.8 million next-generation network ports, and its international calling-card prepaid service capacity by 4.5 million new users. The GSM and NGN expansions are planned over two years and the international calling cards expansion over three years.
Nokia Siemens will provide network planning, implementation, and project management, handling of local logistics and materials as well as system integration for the base station sites.
Both Nokia and Siemens have existing contracts with Bharti which has been highly aggressive in its use of outsourcing services. In 2004, the operator signed more than $2bn worth of contracts to outsourcing its networks, IT, and customer services functions to Nokia, Ericsson, and IBM Global Services.
Last August it entered into a new $1bn deal with Ericsson to expand and upgrade its GSM/GPRS network across rural India, and in November it signed a similar $400m contract with Nokia covering regions including Mumbai, Gujarat, and West Bengal.
