Nortel Wins GMS Expansion Deal from BSNL in India

Canada-based Nortel Networks has recently bagged an order worth more than US$100 million from India's largest telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) to support the latter's GSM network expansion plans.

 

BSNL has selected Nortel to support its southern Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network expansion with a very aggressive roll-out schedule, Nortel said in a statement.

 

Mr Hitesh Lokhandwala, Managing Director of Nortel in India, said: From 2004, Nortel has worked closely with BSNL in rolling out mobile services to some seven million customers in the southern and eastern parts of India

 

Mr Richard Lowe, President of Carrier Networks of Nortel, added “India represents an enormous opportunity for Nortel in the carrier space, with its consistently high growth rates and increasingly mobile population.” “We have redesigned our GSM portfolio with this kind of opportunity in mind, making our solution much more cost competitive, without compromising the performance, capacity and coverage,” he added

 

Nortel's deployment of the BSNL network expansion is already underway and is expected to be completed towards the end of 2008, it added.