Nokia inks $300-M deal with BSNL
Thursday, 07 October 2004, 19:30 IST
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LONDON: Finnish mobile telephony giant Nokia has been awarded a $300 million contract by India's state-run telecom provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) to expand the cellular phone network in north India. Nokia will deploy four million lines across towns, cities, villages and highways in Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Punjab, Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, the two companies said. Apart from handsets, the contract requires Nokia to supply GSM and GPRS radio network equipment, including base stations, switching systems, intelligent networks and short message service systems among other solutions. The contract for GSM turnkey cellular system awarded to Nokia is one of the largest in the world and will be rolled out in just nine months, said S.D. Saxena, the finance director for BSNL. This deal enables Nokia to become an equipment supplier to all the five major GSM operators in the country, said Ashish Chowdhary, Nokia's country head for India and South Asia. BSNL has a pan-Indian telecommunications network with over 42 million subscribers across 5,000 towns and almost seven million GSM cellular subscribers, a company statement said.
Source: IANS
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