Motorola, BSNL sign $178 m GSM contract

NEW DELHI: Motorola Inc. and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (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 basic service provider, 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.

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. Motorola will work with local contractors in each state for

installation and optimization of the networks.

"We are delighted that BSNL has chosen Motorola to install this

expansive network, which will be India's single largest GSM implementation

ever," said Motorola India country manager Pramod Saxena. "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.