Motorola bags BSNL’s Rs 163-crore GSM order in south India

Chennai: The telecom equipment major Motorola has bagged the Rs 163-crore order from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) for setting up a global system for mobile (GSM) communications network in south India.

Motorola will install a GSM network for BSNL in Chennai and expand its existing network of Andhra Pradesh in nine cities, including Hyderabad. The network expansion and deployment, scheduled to be completed by April 2003, will provide BSNL with an additional subscriber capacity of 3.13 lakh.

The cities to be covered are Hyderabad, Vishakapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur, Kakinada, Amalapuram, Tirupathi, Warangal and Rajamundry. The current expansion contract is in addition to the initial $170-million contract awarded by BSNL for the deployment of the GSM cellular network in south India that was announced in early 2002.

Under that initial contract, Motorola deployed the GSM cellular network for a region in the four states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The total capacity of the network deployed by Motorola for BSNL in the south will now total approximately 1.7 million subscribers.

Motorola is a leader in wireless infrastructure in India, with 40-per cent of the cellular subscribers in India today using Motorola-supplied networks. Motorola-supplied networks in metros include: Hutchison in Delhi; Hutchison, BPL and Bharti in Mumbai; Command in Kolkata; and now BSNL in Chennai.