Bharti Airtel is close to firming up deals for buying LTE network equipment for offering broadband services in four circles.
According to industry sources, Airtel is likely to offer contracts to four different vendors for each of the circle.
While Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE are frontrunners for bagging the contract in Karnataka and Kolkata, respectively, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens could get the deal for Punjab and Maharashtra respectively. Though none of the players confirmed the deal, insiders said that talks had reached advanced stage.
Bharti Airtel had bagged broadband spectrum in the four circles for Rs 3,314 crore during the auctions held last year. Reliance Industries, Qualcomm, Tikona, Augere and Aircel are the players which have broadband spectrum in various circles but none of them have started services. Augere, which has spectrum in Madhya Pradesh circle, has announced a deal with Ericsson for equipment supply and launch of services by second quarter of 2012.