Airtel signs multi-billion dollar 4G, 5G equipment deal with Ericsson

India's Bharti Airtel has signed a "multi-billion" dollar deal with Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson to boost its 4G and 5G coverage in the world's second-largest smartphone market.

Under the deal, which Reuters reported in October, Bharti Airtel will buy and deploy equipment from Ericsson likely in 2025. The companies did not disclose exact financial terms of the deal.

Demand from India's 5G market started to skyrocket in 2023, as Bharti Airtel and Jio, the telecom unit of Reliance Industries, started to scale up 5G services.

Ericsson, Bharti Airtel's partner of more than two decades, will deploy centralized radio access network (RAN) and Open RAN-ready solutions, Bharti Airtel said in a press release.

Open RAN allows mobile operators to mix and match equipment from various suppliers, potentially increasing flexibility.

Ericsson will also upgrade the software of its deployed 4G radios, it said.

"This deployment will enable us to further improve the speed, reliability, and coverage of our network," Bharti Airtel's Chief Technology Officer Randeep Sekhon said in the release. The company did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. The deal comes after Ericsson won part of a $3.6 billion contract to sell 5G equipment to Vodafone Idea earlier this year. It shared the contract with Nokia and Samsung.

The new deals are expected to boost Ericsson's revenue next year, after a big fall in contracts from India in the first half of the year. Nokia also signed a "multi-billion" dollar deal with Bharti Airtel last month. 

It is worth noting that the announcement comes shortly after the company announced that it had awarded a multi-year, multi-billion extension deal to Nokia to deploy 4G and 5G equipment across various cities in India. According to the details shared by the company, Nokia will deploy equipment from its 5G AirScale portfolio including base stations, baseband units and the latest generation of Massive MIMO radios. "These solutions will enhance Airtel’s network with exceptional 5G capacity and coverage and support its network evolution," Airtel wrote in a press note.