Ericsson wins $1.3 billion GSM equipment order from BSNL
By Our Corporate Bureau | 07 Sep 2007
Mumbai: State-owned telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has placed equipment and service orders worth $1.3 billion with Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson.
Nokia-Siemens would also soon be offered a large contract, Kuldeep Goyal, chairman and managing director of the state-run telecom firm, said.
BSNL has finalised the tender for adding 22.75 million GSM lines and will be finalising contracts with both Ericsson and Nokia-Siemens. BSNL will be adding two million connections a month from next year and would invest Rs 22,880 crore in 2007-08 for expanding telecom services, he added.
Ericsson had accepted an order for 13.12 million lines at Rs 3,700 per line, the BSNL chairman said. BSNL, he said, generated a revenue of around Rs 39,715 crore and net profit of about Rs 7,806 crore in 2006-07.
While Ericsson has accepted the letter of intent for laying 13.125 million lines, an offer would soon be given to Nokia for adding a capacity of 9.675 million GSM lines.
BSNL would be adding nearly 10.5 million phone subscribers in 2007-08, comprising 8.8 million mobile and 1.65 fixed line connections.
In the last fiscal, about 5,83,000 users surrendered their fixed line connections, but the number of mobile subscribers rose by about 10.1 million. The net addition of subscribers was 9.5 million.
BSNL has a market share of 82.84 per cent in fixed line connections with 35.963 million users, and 15.5 per cent share in cellular services with 29.34 million customers.
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