Uninor in Rs 1,200 cr pact with Huawei

NEW DELHI: Uninor, the India business unit of Norway-based Telenor Group, has entered into a Rs 1,200 crore agreement with Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei for modernization of its entire telecom network across all its circles for three years.

This is the largest deal of its kind in the Indian telecom industry and also within the Telenor Group. As per the deal, all 24,000 base station will be swapped with new equipment and the deal will also involve Huawei becoming the managed services partner of Uninor.

This network modernisation will enhance Uninor’s network capacity to offer superior experience both on voice and internet. With energy efficient and better coverage infrastructure, Uninor will deploy green energy solutions that will optimise network cost and improve indoor coverage to further strengthen Uninor’s “ Sabse Sasta ” position.

“With this ambitious drive, we will be able to offer any advanced internet service to our customers and provide a superior experience both on voice and internet. Being a mass market player, we continue to focus on building our capabilities to offer better internet and voice services at Sabse Sasta prices.” said Vivek Sood, CEO, Telewings Communications Services (Uninor).

The project will be spread over a period of three years and aims to modernise Uninor’s existing network with Huawei’s new architecture, platforms and equipment. This will enable Uninor to be future ready to address the exponential data growth in India.

“In this project, we will modernise the existing BTS and install new single RAN green BTS which are future technology ready. This will provide superior voice and data quality, lower power consumption and better spectral efficiency. With our cutting-edge NGN and customer-centric model we will enable Uninor to a smooth transition towards future technologies,” said Baker Zhou, Vice-President, Huawei.

Under the current program, Uninor will benefit from Huawei’s 'managed services' delivery system integrating multi-vendors that includes swapping of existing network with new and modern equipment, planning and optimisation, maintenance services and customer experience management. Huawei will bring its end-to-end network backbone elements to the project.

This includes environment friendly green solutions that lower power consumption by almost 30% and increase spectral efficiency for a lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) in overall network management.

Last year, Uninor had expanded its network coverage by 30% and added 5,000 sites across its six operational circles taking the network coverage to nearly 24,000 sites. It continues to increase its footprint in six circles and will be launching commercial operation in Assam soon.