
Monday, October 8, 2001 |
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Lead Article |
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Motorola and BSNL
tie up
MOTOROLA
INC. and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) have signed a contract to
deploy India’s single largest order for a Global System for Mobile (GSM)
communications infrastructure in each of the four states in South
India. The contract, valued at $178 million, will support a total of
1.4 million subscribers in the states of Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu
and Andhra Pradesh.
BSNL, a government-owned
entity, is the largest basic wireline service provider in the country
currently with over 34 million subscribers. BSNL was recently awarded
a license to operate as the third cellular service provider and has
ambitious plans to provide GSM cellular services in south India.
"We are delighted that BSNL has chosen Motorola to install this
expansive network, which will be India’s single largest GSM
implementation ever," said Pramod Saxena, Country Manager for
Motorola India. "The southern zone is amongst the most important
zones for any cellular service provider as it has 30 per cent of the
country’s cellular subscriber base and the highest average revenue
per unit in the country. The Motorola network is designed to be
scalable and robust to address the growing number of subscribers in
the south zone," said Saxena.
Motorola will provide
seamless cellular access across 280 cities and highways in the four
states. The agreement for a total turnkey 900 MHz GSM network includes
base stations, switches, intelligent network, billing platform, and
turnkey services and project management and also includes terminal
devices and subscriber identity module (SIM) cards. — TNS
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