Reliance Comm signs $1 bn managed services deal with Ericsson

Reliance Communications (RCom) has signed a seven-year full-scope managed services agreement worth $1 billion with Ericsson to operate and manage their wireline and wireless networks across India, a statement by the latter said here Friday.

Swedish telecom gear-maker Ericsson will also take over responsibility for the field maintenance, network operations and operational planning of RCom's 2G, CDMA and 3G mobile networks.

This strategic pan-Indian deal is an expansion of the existing agreement, which enables Ericsson to deepen its partnership with RCom and extends its managed services footprint nationwide across all the 22 circles in India. This is the first pan-Indian managed services deal for Ericsson, the statement said.

"Given the complexity of networks and the growing performance expectations from customers, we are banking on the experience, innovation and technical expertise of Ericsson to improve the productivity of our network and ensure customer satisfaction and retention by delivering superior network performance and service quality at optimized costs," said Suresh Rangachar, head of commercial, Reliance Communications.

"We have been managing their (RCom) networks in north and west and are now pleased to extend this support to all 22 circles. The growing uptake in the use of new technologies requires an increased focus on customer experience management, and that will be our focus as we take on this mandate," said Magnus Mandersson, executive vice president and head of Business Unit Global Services, Ericsson.

Ericsson will streamline RCom's operations by bringing all aspects of fibre, mobile networks and wireline access networks to RCom's wireless and Global Enterprise Business, across differentiated product lines.

Under this agreement, Ericsson will also work with RCom to identify opportunities to introduce new services and expand its existing businesses to help realize the full potential of its network. The integration is effective as of Dec 1, 2014.

RCom's infrastructure covers over 150,000 km of fibre, 2G/3G/CDMA mobile network, wireline access and enterprise network in 22 telecom circles, across India and includes 21,000 towns and 400,000 villages to which it offers converged services including voice, data and video.