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.
Zain signs network outsourcing deal with Ericsson (Middle East)
Zain, a leading telecom operator in the Middle East, has reportedly signed a network outsourcing deal with Sweden based Ericsson worth $650 million, in an attempt to improve the quality of its network.
According to reports, under the five year deal, Ericsson will manage Zain Iraq’s mobile network and IT operations and is the next step towards the operator launching third generation (3G) services. Further, Zain has reportedly said that the agreement covers Zain Iraq’s 3,700 network sites, including the Kurdish north where the operator recently launched commercial services, and will enable it to reduce operating costs and bring products and services to market quicker.
The operator claims that this agreement is a significant deal for Zain as it is expected to enhance the company’s competitiveness in the Iraqi market.
Ericsson to sign $1.5 bln India Bharti deal -paper
India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd. is set to sign a three-year, $1.5 billion network outsourcing deal with Sweden’s Ericsson . Ericsson will be entrusted with design, planning, supply, installation, commissioning and upgrading of Bharti Airtel network in 15 telecom circles.
A spokesman for Bharti, India’s top mobile services firm, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Last week, Bharti said it was in talks with telecom equipment maker Ericsson for a network expansion deal after it signed a similar contract worth $900 million with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) .
In August last year, Ericsson had won an estimated $1 billion contract to expand and upgrade Bharti’s telecom network and to supply services.
India’s telecom services firms such as Bharti and Reliance Communications are rapidly rolling out networks across the country to tap the vast rural population as growth in urban areas starts to plateau.
Indian cellular providers added more than 5 million GSM customers in May, taking the user base to 130.6 million in the world’s fastest-growing cellular market.
