AirtelLeading 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.

Filed under:Mobile  Tagged with:
 

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, 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.”

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.

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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…)

Bharti, Ericsson in Expansion Deal

Bharti Airtel has signed a $1 billion (approximately Rs 4,500 crores) network expansion contract with Ericsson, a Swedish telecom equipment maker.Under this contract, Bharti Airtel will expand and upgrade its GSM and GPRS network, as well as managed services. The deal will enable Bharti Airtel to rapidly extend its GSM footprint in the country, and increase its network capacity.

The three-year services agreement will see Ericsson manage design, development, and deployment of Airtel’s network, including capacity and coverage, enabling the operator to expand in rural India, and reach out to all towns and cities in around 15 regions.Speaking at the occasion, Manoj Kohli, president, Bharti Airtel, said that their partnership with Ericsson allows them to focus on delivering better customer experience, even as they leverage the world-class expertise of their partners to roll out their networks across all census towns by March 2007.

Kohli said that they are also sourcing next generation products that will allow them to deliver innovative products and services to customers.

The contract also involves Ericsson upgrading the Airtel network with mobile softswitch (Media Gateway and MSC server), the solution that paves the way to an all-IP network. Bharti Airtel will be able to cut operational costs, and introduce new services in a cost-efficient way.

The scope of the agreement extends to 15 Airtel circles of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, UP (East and West), Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, and the North East.

In a statement, Mats Granryd, managing director, Ericsson India, said that rollout speed plays an extremely important role in large expansions of this nature, and that Ericsson has demonstrated expertise in this area. They are honored and pleased that Bharti Airtel has chosen them as a partner to expand its coverage across the country, particularly in untapped rural areas.

Source- http://www.techtree.com

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