Bharti Airtel inks 5 year deal with Avaya (India)
Leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel has signed a five year contract with telecom equipment maker Avaya, to build call centres across Asia and Africa. According to reports, Ed Nalbandian, head of Avaya’s managed services and contact centre solutions, said that it is the largest deal they have ever done. He added that the deal was signed in March.
Nalbandian said that getting into Africa is a big deal for them and they want to differentiate themselves there. He added that Avaya’s technology will support over a billion calls a year and include video and social media capabilities in the call centers.
Orange Business Services inks 5 year deal with JTI (France, Japan)
Orange Business Services has signed a five-year outsourcing contract with JTI (Japan Tobacco International), the international business of Japan Tobacco Inc., worth over $100 million. Orange Business Services helps JTI with managed services such as LAN, data and voice traffic, security and call centers among others.
As per reports, Diego De Coen, JTI CIO, said that their 17-year relationship with Orange Business Services is built on trust and mutual success. Such a long-term relationship is nearly unheard of these days and this contract renewal was not a given. Instead, Orange Business Services proved again that its competitive strength, unmatched global reach and comprehensive portfolio made it the best choice for JTI as they continue to evolve their global telecom infrastructure and services.
Helmut Reisinger, Senior Vice President Europe, Orange Business Services, said that over the years, they have developed a very strong partnership with JTI. They are grateful and proud that they have been entrusted with this contract for another five years. This is certainly mainly due to the quality of services they have been providing to JTI, even during the days of 2011 turbulences in times of the Japan earthquake or the ‘Egyptian spring’ where their business continuity plans proved to be beneficial to a lot of multinationals such as JTI. Building on the success, they look forward to collaborating with JTI on innovative solutions over the next several years.
Vodafone partners with Smart Communications to deliver managed services (Philippines)
Mobile operator Vodafone has partnered with Smart Communications to offer managed services to large corporations in Philippines.
According to reports, Stevan Hoyle, president, Vodafone’s enterprise operations in APAC, has said that the value to Vodafone of collaborating with (Conexus) is significant given the growing importance of Asia to the enterprise customers. He added that the partnership with Smart will allow the Philippines operator to provide global enterprises operating in the Philippines with a range of services through a single contract. With MNC employees using a variety of handsets, devices and tablets more and more for greater mobility, these enterprises need to streamline their legal needs.
Hoyle also said that corporate customers want to have fewer lawyers working on fewer contracts. They offer to wrap things up in one contract, one SLA (service level agreement). Reports reveal that the managed services offered will include Spend Manager for global spend information and procurement tracking service Central Ordering.
Airtel renews managed services contract with Nokia (Africa, India)
Leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel, has extended its managed services contract with Nokia Siemens Networks for an additional five years. According to company reports, the contract covers Airtel’s network in eight circles consisting of Bihar and Jharkhand; Kolkata; Gujarat; Maharashtra and Goa; Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh; Mumbai; Orissa and West Bengal.
Under this five-year managed services contract, Nokia Siemens Networks will manage and maintain Bharti Airtel’s 3G and GSM networks as well as iWAN (internet Wireless Access Network), the operator’s enterprise broadband service. This next phase of managed services relationship will help Bharti Airtel achieve better network efficiency, simplify operations and deliver better quality services.
Sanjay Kapoor, CEO, India and South Asia, Bharti Airtel has said that India started its journey of transformation from voice to data with the deployment of 3G.The data story in the country has just begun and they will witness increasing complexity due to multiplicity of network layers specifically when serving data. It is imperative for any service provider to have a complete end-to-end view to manage voice and data services. This initiative is in line with their strategy to create ubiquitous networks for offering enriched customer experience. Nokia Siemens Networks has been their long standing managed services partner and they are happy to continue their association further.
Ashish Chowdhary, head of customer operations Asia and Middle East, Nokia Siemens Networks said this deal will allow Bharti to simplify processes and improve end-to-end network and service performance. More importantly, stringent key performance indicators ensure they’re helping Bharti Airtel deliver an enhanced subscriber experience.
Axis extends managed services partnership with Ericsson
Axis, Indonesian mobile network operator has extended its managed services partnership with Ericsson in a four-year contract. Building on the managed services cooperation, which began in 2008, Ericsson will now be responsible for Axis’ network operations, field maintenance, support services and spare parts management in Greater Jakarta and Northern Sumatra.
Ericsson will support more than 3,000 radio base stations.
According to Erik Aas, President Director and CEO of Axis, he is pleased to announce Ericsson’s participation and partnership during this important period for the company. Over the past two years, mobile services have become much more affordable in Indonesia and Axis has become Indonesians’ best choice for affordability, simplicity and reliability. With Ericsson taking care of our network operations, the company is able to focus on expanding their reach and on bringing great value for money mobile services to all customers – as well as strengthening position in the Indonesian telecommunication market.
According to Mats Otterstedt, President of Ericsson Indonesia, Indonesia is an important market for them. The company’s presence here dates back to 1907 and has played a significant role in the development of the country’s telecommunications industry. In 2008, the company entered a partnership with Axis to build, operate and manage its new 3G/WCDMA network in Greater Jakarta. By extending and expanding this deal, they can continue to support Axis in this rapidly growing market.
IMImobile and IL&FS Education partner to launch “English Seekho†on Mobiles
IMImobile, the global technology partner for operators, media providers and enterprises and IL&FS Education & Technology Services limited, one of India’s leading education and training company, today announces the launch of English Seekho†on mobiles. Introduced with an intent of teaching conversational English language to the non- native speaker, the English Seekho†initiative will offer a complete ‘On the go’ learning solution.
IMImobile and IL&FS together have taken the initiative to cut down the communication barriers and make the learning experience sufficiently easy so that casual lessons enable a non-native English speaker to effectively pick up English. This most effective and interactive way to learn English language will address the problems faced by non-native English speakers like junior level clerks, traders, unskilled laborers, frontline staff, taxi drivers, restaurant waiters, farmers and others who face problems understanding the English language and conversing in English. The content is available for users’ proficient with 7 Indian languages Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam and it also provides its users grammar lessons through SMS.
IMImobile provides an immersive, innovative and highly interactive IVR lesson that allows users to learn and practice lessons as well. It also has a testing session at the end of each lesson ensuring a positive learning outcome. English Seekho is a voice based learning solution focusing on learning spoken English for the non-native speaker. The course structure consists of 10 chapters and 44 lessons with one lesson per day of 5-8 minutes. The curriculum provides a special focus on interviews, getting jobs and on job training. The total length of the programme is of 350 minutes. The range of service offerings includes focusing on social English speaking on various occasion with various people, interactive IVR lessons as well as practice and recall sessions with multiple choice questions.
To use this application the user needs to call the IVR number and select the language of their comfort. After that they need to select the specific sub-sections of their choice. This application is available at a subscription cost of Rs. 30 per month and call browsing charge of 30 paise per minute.
Madhavan Iyer, Vice President Managed Services, IMImobile said, We have always been working towards innovation in telecom VAS space, and have realised that the huge potential the medium presents can only be unlocked by expanding the consumption boundaries. Our association with IL&FS Education is another step to expand definition and benefit boundaries of the end consumers. With this alliance we are confident of providing the mobile users an intelligent platform that will enable them to eventually get acquainted with M-learning and thus utilize its services to the fullest.â€
Ninad Vengurlekar, Head of New Media in Education at IL&FS Education says – “Globally M-Learning is still at a nascent stage and therefore IL&FS Education is having deep engagements with its subscribers to develop the right instructional methodology and content that can impact learning. For example, English Seekho is built on IL&FS Educations’ long experience in teaching english skills to over 200,000 rural and urban youth and school children. We believe that M-Learning is more about quality of education delivery and less about mobile technology and hence our product development efforts in m-learning have been slow and cautious, rather than fast and frivolous. VAS, by default provides scale in India, and therefore we are focused on developing strong learning outcomes for our products.”
About IMImobile
IMImobile is a global service creation and technology partner for operators, media companies and enterprises. The IMImobile products and services portfolio is built on a core modular service platform called DaVinci that delivers a wide range of carrier-grade services including rich address book, social aggregation, mobile advertising, music, messaging solutions, mobile marketing, storefronts, portal management and call completion services.
With technology designed for rapid deployment and revenue generation, IMImobile is working with leading operators, content owners and media owners including Airtel, Vodafone, MTN, Virgin Mobile, Meteor, Reuters, Yahoo, Google, EMI Music, Universal Music, Sony and Warner Music. IMImobile has operations in 66 countries with offices in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
For more information www.imimobile.com
About ILFS Education and Technology Services Limited
IL&FS Education & Technology Services Limited is one of India’s leading education and training companies with a focus on school education, skill development and corporate training. IETS products and programs have impacted over 1 million participants across private, government and social sector.
IETS has undertaken one of the world’s largest training initiatives of training 2.75 lacs Government employees in Good Governance Skills. IETS trainers have also trained over 1.30 lacs fresh graduates in spoken English skills for Infosys Technologies. In addition, IETS has trained over 1,25,000 participants for leading organisations like ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Lombard, NABARD, Vodafone, and several leading insurance companies. IETS has recently launched over 600+ Rural Education Centres to train rural youth in job oriented vocational and soft skills. Industry partnerships include Intel, IBM, Tally, amongst others. Over 8500 students are currently enrolled in these centres.
Hutchison 3G Austria modernizes its network for HSPA+ and LTE
Hutchison 3G Austria is modernizing its radio access network to be ready for HSPA+ and the next generation of mobile broadband, or LTE. At the same time this step will allow the operator to halve the energy consumption of its base stations. Nokia Siemens Networks will undertake this upgrade starting in autumn 2009.
The demand for increased mobile broadband capacity and throughput in Austria is reflected in the increasing usage of data cards and mobile services like Mobile TV, video download or video sharing,†said Berthold Thoma, CEO of Hutchison 3G Austria. Mobile broadband is also one of the most pragmatic solutions to bridging the digital gap between cities and rural areas. For rural areas, mobile broadband coverage is simply less expensive and faster to deploy than fiber to the home†solutions. We hope that with our nationwide coverage we will contribute significantly to this end.†(more…)
