Reliance Communication, India’s telecommunications service provider has signed a $1-billion, eight-year deal with Ericsson (News - Alert), under which Ericsson will provide wireless and wireline managed services to Reliance’s networks in Western and Northern states of India.

This is one of the first of its kind in India, and one of only a handful in the world.

Under the contract, the field maintenance, network operations and operational planning of Reliance Communications (News - Alert) 2G, CDMA and 3G mobile networks will be done by Ericsson. This deal will help Reliance to address the fast growing customer demand for communications applications and services in India.

Just as well, by leveraging Ericsson's world-class processes, methods and tools, Reliance Communications can increase its focus on providing a better user experience, and enhanced customer service to its clients.

At present, Reliance Communications provides voice, data and video services to 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages in India.

Commenting on the agreement, Gurdeep Singh, chief executive officer of Wireless Business at Reliance Communications said, "We are happy to announce our partnership with Ericsson to manage our wireline and wireless network enabling us to provide a higher level of customer experience in terms of network and services. Given the complexity of network increasing with platforms, technologies and application offerings, we are banking on the experience, innovation and technical expertise of Ericsson to improve the productivity of our network and ensure that it delivers to its full potential."

To streamline the operations, Ericsson will converge the fiber, tower operations, wireless networks and wireline access networks to Reliance Communications' wireless and global enterprise business. Ericsson will also be revamping existing tools and processes, and implementing best practices across the business to bring numerous operational efficiencies.

Magnus Mandersson, executive vice president and head of business unit global services, Ericsson, said in a statement, "We are excited to partner with Reliance Communications for this strategic multi-technology managed services deal. The increasing uptake of new technologies requires an increased focus on customer experience management in the hyper competitive and highly dynamic Indian telecom market. With this partnership, Reliance will increase focus on their core business and innovation. We are pleased to welcome more than 5,000 employees who will join us from Reliance Communications and support our long-term commitment to India's ICT market."