Uninor on Wednesday announced that it has signed a network modernisation deal with Huawei that will amongst other things see the Chinese vendor replace tens of thousands of base stations.
The Indian mobile operator said it has contracted Huawei as its managed services partner.
Under the terms of the deal brokered by the pair, the Chinese vendor will switch out all 24,000 of Uninor’s mobile base stations and replace them with its own equipment.
"In this project, we will modernise the existing BTS and install new single RAN green BTS which are future technology ready," said Huawei vice president Baker Zhou, in a statement.
"This will provide superior voice and data quality, lower power consumption and better spectral efficiency," he added.
The project will take th ree years and is designed to help Uninor prepare for anticipated rapid growth in demand for mobile data in India, the telco said. It did not disclose the value of the deal.
However, it claimed that "this is the largest deal of its kind in the Indian telecom industry and also within the Telenor group." The Norwegian incumbent took 100% control of Uninor in October last year.
"With this ambitious drive, we will be able to offer any advanced Internet service to our customers and provide a superior experience both on voice and Internet," said Uninor CEO Vivek Sood.
The firm added that the project would also enable it to improve indoor coverage and to reduce costs. As part of the deal Huawei will provide some backbone network elements that are designed to lower power consumption by almost 30%.
Uninor said it expanded network coverage by 30% last year, adding 5,000 base station sites across the six circles in which it operates. It plans to launch commercial operations in a seventh circle, Assam, soon.
