India’s prominent mobile operator, Reliance Communications has entered into an alliance with France’s telecom equipment manufacturer Alcatel-Lucent. As per the sources, the French Company has acquired a contract for providing managed services to the multi-vendor and multi-technology wireless networks of Reliance. This agreement is touted to be worth $450-500 million approximately and brings Alcatel-Lucent into the profitable GSM fray of India. Other important mobile operators of India like Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular have also farmed out their networks’ management and maintenance.

 

Alcatel-Lucent, under this contract, will cater managed services for the CDMA & GSM networks of Reliance in India, which will include the 12 circles in the north and western parts of the country. It is reported that the joint venture (JV) will gradually be extended to cover Reliance’s international operations also. Further on sources state that a completely new entity will be created for this JV and that its operational control will be taken care by Alcatel-Lucent.