In According to sources, RCom, Indias second largest mobile operator by subscribers, is currently in advanced talks to finalise a $1.5 billion, multi-vendor managed services outsourcing deal with major telecom gearmakers like ZTE, Huawei and Ericsson. If the deal gets inked, it would be the first instance of RCom handing over operations, planning, maintenance and management of its countrywide CDMA and GSM networks to a cluster of vendors as opposed to a single entity.
For the past three years, RCom's mobile networks have been managed by Alcatel Lucent Managed Solutions, through a 67:33 joint venture between Alcatel Lucent and RCom. As the contract is an annualised one, it is shortly expected to come up for renewal. After RCom moved into the 3G space, its networks have become lot more complex, as it involves complex, cross-vendor technologies and equipment. In such a scenario, it makes sense for RCom to migrate to a multi-vendor, multi-year managed services execution model.
The main aim of the new deal that RCom is expected to ink soon, will be to scale up the efficiency of the companys network management operations by several notches. This will lead to enhancement in the quality of services. In India, Bharti Airtel has pioneered the concept of outsourcing key operational functions. This has turned out to be a low-cost and efficient model of managing networks and is now being employed by most telecom companies in the country.
Currently, the networks of all leading mobile phone firms in the country - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Tele and Idea - are being managed by either Ericsson, Finland-based Nokia Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent or Chinese players such as Huawei and ZTE. The outsourcing model has even found favour with new entrants in the telecom field, players like Unitech Wireless (Uninor), Loop and Sistema-Shyam. Precise details are not available, but according to industry insiders, the multi-year managed services contract could be benchmarked at roughly $20 million a year, per circle.
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