Huawei bags three-year managed services contract from Vodafone India

NEW DELHI: Chinese equipment maker Huawei Technologies has bagged a three-year $180-$220 million (Rs1,200-1,470 crore) managed services contract from Vodafone India covering several circles, people familiar with the matter said.

Huawei will provide managed services, including network operations, to Vodafone in Kerala, Tamil Nadu & Chennai and Odisha circles, replacing Finnish rival Nokia.

It will also offer network operations in Andhra Pradesh and Delhi, where Nokia will continue to provide a part of managed services to Vodafone, one of the people said.

The new contract follows a recent big-ticket deal Huawei got from market leader Bharti Airtel for upgrading the wireline network with vectoring, GPON and G.Fast technologies, which helped the carrier in launching 100 Mbps broadband services in 87 cities.

“The agreement has been signed between Vodafone and Huawei. Both companies are now working towards formalisation of the contract, which includes transition of manpoPrawer,” a second person said. Third-party employees working with the existing vendor will now move to Huawei, along with some of Vodafone and Huawei’s on-roll employees. “Overall, there will be around 1,000 employees, third party and on rolls employees included,” this person said.

AVodafone spokesperson said the company works with several infrastructure providers, but declined to comment on the Huawei partnership. In February, it had awarded a three-year contract to Ericsson to manage optical fibre networks in 10 telecom circles.

Huawei didn’t respond to ET’s emailed queries. A Nokia spokeswoman said it cannot comment on its customer engagements “due to silent period (ahead of earnings release) and as per Nokia policy”.

Huawei has lately been making inroads into India’s telecom managed services — typically covering technology and network operations — a segment so far led by Ericsson and Nokia.