Bharti Airtel awards ‘multibillion’ 5G gear extension deal to Nokia

In its first big sourcing agreement since its August 2022 orders for 5G deployment, telecom major Bharti Airtel on Wednesday announced it had awarded to Nokia a multiyear, multibillion extension deal for 4G and 5G equipment across key Indian cities and states.

While Reliance Jio, another major telecom service provider, is yet to make further gear purchases, Vodafone Idea (Vi) had in September made public its $3.6 billion network equipment order to global majors Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung over a three-year period. Industry insiders say these deals could revive capital expenditure in India’s telecom market, which had been low in the past two years, after some announcements at the start of the 5G rollout.