NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel, the country’s leading telecom operator, has awarded a big-ticket 4G deployment and expansion contract worth around $500 million to Finnish telecom gear vendor Nokia. By giving this contract, Bharti Airtel is expediting its network expansion and ramping up capacities to counter the looming threat from Reliance Jio, which is currently offering free services in the country, industry watchers say.Nokia and Bharti Airtel didn't share the value of the contract. On demand side, consumer are going to use more data, while on the supply side, standards are getting evolved.“Given the expected data boom, and carrier aggregation across FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE, this expansion becomes relevant for Bharti Airtel,” Dhamija added. .The new deployment will allow Bharti Airtel to provide improved coverage and faster mobile Internet access, while laying the foundation for the delivery of enhanced video services and other on-demand applications. "We have a long history of working with Bharti Airtel and with this latest agreement we have become the largest supplier of 4G for the company.

Source: Economic Times October 17, 2016 09:45 UTC