In an attempt to offer state-of-the-art 4G LTE service in India, Videocon Telecom announced partnership with Huawei technologies. Earlier, the duo had run into dispute over payments when Videocon Telecom lost 21 of its licences along with 101 others following the Supreme Court judgement in February 2012. It appears, the issue has now been resolved amicably.
The partnership to implement 4G LTE-ready Packet Core technology comes in the wake of expanding the current network to provide a larger data coverage and reduce the overall CAPEX and OPEX leading to an improved profitability and lower costs to end users. Videocon at present operates only in four service areas and out of which three (Haryana, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh) are managed by Huawei for its 2G services.
Under the agreement the Chinese equipment firm Huawei will provide the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) technology for Videocon’s core network.
Highlighting the partnership with Videocon Telecom, Cai Liqun, CEO of Huawei India said: “Huawei is a customer-centric company and believes in providing state-of-the-art technology to Indian customers. We hold a global leadership position in Packet Core networks and are very happy to partner with Videocon Telecom to bring this cutting-edge technology by which the operator can leverage the service-agile platform to monetize on new data services and significantly increase their revenue potential on new IP-based multi-media services.”
Videocon Telecom said that in the initial phase of mobile broadband implementation, it intends to cover the cities of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Indore in MP-Chattisgarh and Panipat in Haryana telecom circles. The LTE-ready infrastructure is likely to be extended to other cities and towns in the 6 telecom circles of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh, Haryana, UP-East, UP-West and Bihar in the later phases.