Reliance Communications awards $1 billion managed services contract to Ericsson

Reliance Communications (RCom) has awarded a $1-billion outsourcing agreement with Ericsson to operate and manage its wireline and wireless networks for Northern and Western states of India. The contract is spread over an eight year period.

As per the contract, Ericsson will manage the day-today operations across wireline and wireless networks and will take over responsibility for field maintenance, network operations and operational planning of RCom's 2G, CDMA and 3G mobile networks.

This agreement is aimed at meeting customer demand for communications applications and services in one of the world's most dynamic telecom markets, RCom said in a statement.

Ericsson will streamline RCom's operations by bringing all aspects of fiber, tower operations, wireless networks and wireline access networks to RCom's wireless and global enterprise business, across differentiated product lines.

''We are happy to announce our partnership with Ericsson to manage our wireline and wireless network enabling us to provide a higher level of customer experience in terms of network and services. Given the complexity of network increasing with platforms, technologies and application offerings, we are banking on the experience, innovation and technical expertise of Ericsson to improve the productivity of our network and ensure that it delivers to its full potential. We are confident that they will exceed the expectations of our customers through optimisation of resources and provide us cost effective solutions,'' Gurdeep Singh, chief executive officer, wireless business at RCom said.
 
Ericsson will be responsible for improving network performance and ultimately service quality, with the goal of increasing customer satisfaction and retention.

''This partnership will enable our enterprise customers to deploy state-of-the-art data services on our integrated network through the global expertise of Ericsson. This is one of the first times that wireless and wireline enterprise network is being outsourced to deliver world-class service and performance assurance,'' added Punit Garg, chief executive officer, Global and Enterprise Business, RCom.