Huawei Technologies signs $150-million deal with Vodafone to upgrade wireline network

NEW DELHI: Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies has signed a $150-million (about Rs 900 crore) pan-India deal with Vodafone to upgrade and augment capacity of the telecom operator’s wireline network to enable it to handle increasing data traffic.

“Data is growing exponentially in India and telcos need to have bigger pipers, which can handle this kind of data growth and video traffic,” a person familiar with the development said on condition of anonymity. “The solutions that Huawei is deploying can handle such data growth.”

The person added that the transformed backbone wireline network will also help Vodafone support its enterprise services and allow it to offer new data-rich services to its customers. The solutions will help telco reduce operating expenditure as well, this person said.

Huawei and Vodafone India did not immediately respond to ET’s queries. As smartphone sales surge, the Indian telecom industry is seeing subscribers use more and more data services on 2G and increasingly on 3G.