India’s Bharti Airtel on Wednesday signed a “multi-billion” dollar deal with Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson to boost its 4G and 5G coverage in the world’s second-largest smartphone market.

Under the deal, which Reuters reported in October, Bharti Airtel will buy and deploy equipment from Ericsson likely in 2025. The companies did not disclose exact financial terms of the deal.

Demand from India’s 5G market started to skyrocket in 2023, as Bharti Airtel and Jio, the telecom unit of Reliance Industries, started to scale up 5G services.

Ericsson, Bharti Airtel’s partner of more than two decades, will deploy centralized radio access network (RAN) and Open RAN-ready solutions, Bharti Airtel said in a press release.

Open RAN allows mobile operators to mix and match equipment from various suppliers, potentially increasing flexibility.

Ericsson will also upgrade the software of its deployed 4G radios, it said.

“This deployment will enable us to further improve the speed, reliability, and coverage of our network,” Bharti Airtel’s Chief Technology Officer Randeep Sekhon said in the release.

The company did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

The deal comes after Ericsson won part of a $3.6 billion contract to sell 5G equipment to Vodafone Idea earlier this year. It shared the contract with Nokia and Samsung.

The new deals are expected to boost Ericsson’s revenue next year, after a big fall in contracts from India in the first half of the year.

Nokia also signed a “multi-billion” dollar deal with Bharti Airtel last month.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

Finland’s Nokia is in talks with Bharti Airtel about securing a multi-billion dollar contract to provide 5G telecom equipment for the Indian mobile operator which is expanding its network, three sources familiar with the matter said.

Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson already won a multi-billion dollar contract from Bharti Airtel, Reuters reported on Monday.

India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market where companies such as Airtel, Reliance’s Jio and Vodafone Idea have been spending billions of dollars to upgrade their networks to 5G.

Their orders last year had helped Nokia and Ericsson offset weakness in demand from US customers. However, the volume of orders from India has slowed down significantly after a growth spurt last year.

The deal with Airtel would be for Nokia’s latest AirScale mobile radios that support upgrading an existing network to 5G-Advanced and reduces energy costs, according to the sources.

Nokia declined to comment. Bharti Airtel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

One of the sources called the potential Nokia deal a “routine and ongoing arrangement” with network vendor partners.

Nokia will report its third-quarter earnings on Thursday. In the second quarter, Nokia reported an 18 percent drop in net sales, mainly because of slowdown in demand in India.

Alongside Nokia and Ericsson, Airtel is also in talks with Samsung about buying 5G equipment, another source said.

Samsung has been trying to grow its network equipment business, but has so far lagged Nokia and Ericsson. Samsung won its first 5G contract with Airtel in 2022. India has blocked its mobile carriers from using 5G telecom equipment made by China’s Huawei.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)