Bharti Airtel Signs Record Networking Deal With Ericsson

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel and Swedish telecom major Ericsson are set to ink the country''s largest networking deal on July 17. This will be Bharti''s second billion dollar networking outsourcing deal with Ericsson in under an year, where the latter will upgrade and expand Airtel''s GSM and GPRS network in 15 telecom circles as well as provide managed services to increase network capacity and services footprint. Ericsson already manages about 70% of Bharti Airtel''s network in India. In February 2004, Bharti inked a similar agreement with Ericsson valued at over $400 million to build and manage networks across 13 circles, followed by a $250-million deal in June 2005 to offer managed services and expand its GSM/GPRS network in 15 circles. Bharti then topped it up with a $1-billion network expansion deal with Ericsson for the same 15 circles in August 2006.