Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, May 28, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, May 28, 2004 |
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Info-Tech
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Telecommunications Bharti, Nokia in $275-m tie-up Our Bureau
Mr Ashish Chowdhary, Country Head (India & South Asia), Networks, Nokia and Mr Manoj Kohli, President (Mobility), Bharti Televentures Ltd, at a news conference to announce a major initiative to build and manage `MEGA' networks in Mumbai. - Paul Noronha
Mumbai , May 27 BHARTI Tele-Ventures and Nokia on Thursday announced a $275-million `MEGA Networks' initiative to build and manage networks that would boost the quality of service offered by the leading Indian cellular service provider. As part of the initiative and a three-year service contract, Nokia would provide quality assurance to AirTel networks in Mumbai, Maharashtra (including Goa) and Gujarat and the two new circles of Bihar (including Jharkhand) and Orissa. The initiative is expected to result in providing congestion-free networks with seamless coverage and enhanced quality in over 550 towns and cities across the five circles. The move would benefit more than a million existing AirTel customers in these circles and new customers that would be added in coming years. Mr Manoj Kohli, President (Mobility), Bharti Televentures, said: ``Our agreement with Nokia is a major step forward in aligning the interest of the operator and the vendor partner. "This will enable us to have world-class network, wider coverage and significantly improved quality of service on one hand, while giving us economies of scale and significantly improved cash flows on the other." Nokia will also deploy its network optimisation tools such as Nokia NetAct, a multi-vendor and multi-technology operations support system on a single platform. In addition, Nokia would also provide spare part management service for multi-vendor hardware. AirTel will be able to channelise its resources towards its core areas with Nokia managing the network and capacities. The MEGA Networks initiative will have Nokia deploying up to five times the current network capacity in the next two years in the five circles. The agreement is on the basis of `capacity on demand' and `pay as you grow'. The agreement also provisions for taking over of close to 100 Bharti employees by Nokia.
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