Tata Tele partners with Nokia Siemens

New Delhi: Tata Teleservices has selected Nokia Siemens Networks for its pan-India GSM network roll-out. While the exact deal size is not known, Tata Tele had earlier announced that it will invest close to $1.5 billion over the next two years for setting up its GSM infrastructure. Most of this amount will go into the network.

Tata Tele has received spectrum in 12 circles so far and is planning to roll out 60 million lines initially. Under the terms of the partnership, Nokia Siemens Networks has been identified as one of the main vendors that will manage the operations of the network it deploys over a period of five years.

The complete services outlay includes local supplies, network planning, project management, network roll-out and systems integration activities across the national network.

Nokia Siemens Networks will be responsible for GSM services across a majority of TTSL’s 22 telecom circles in India.

Th deal further intensifies the competition between the Finnish company and its Swedish rival Ericsson in the Indian telecom gear market.

Both these companies have got a majority of the contracts from the Indian operators over the past 3-4 years, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Aircel and Idea Cellular.