Summary Indian mobile phone firm RCom has awarded a $1-billion, eight-year contract to Swedish firm.
MUMBAI - Indian mobile phone firm Reliance Communications (RCom) on Monday announced it has awarded a $1-billion, eight-year contract to Swedish telecom equipment-maker Ericsson to run some of its networks.
Ericsson will manage the daily operations of RCom s wireline and wireless networks in northern and western India, the companies said in a joint statement.
The awarding of the contract follows a similar RCom deal announced last month with US-French telecom equipment supplier Alcatel-Lucent, to deliver voice and data communication services to RCom s networks in southern and eastern India.
"This agreement is aimed to meet the fast evolving customer demand for communications applications and services in one of the world s most dynamic telecom markets," the companies said.
Mumbai-based RCom, part of the Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Group, is India s third-largest mobile phone company with about 134 million subscribers.
The deal -- aimed at cutting costs for Reliance -- comes at a time when local telecom firms are slowing down investments, amid intense competition and regulatory policy uncertainty in India, a leading global telecoms market.
Over 5,000 RCom employees -- a fifth of its workforce -- will move to Ericsson as part of the project, Ericsson s executive vice president Magnus Mandersson said.
Rcom s rivals such as Bharti Airtel and the local arm of Vodafone have already outsourced their network-management operations to non-Indian partners to help them focus on their core services.
Reliance Communications infrastructure covers 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages in India, the statement said.
