At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014, Ericsson today announced its 5 year agreement with Vodafone to handle its Project Spring organic investment program.
Ericsson did not share full details about its association with Vodafone and size of the deal.
The total size of Vodafone Project Spring project is around $11.2 billion.
Also read: Vodafone third quarter Capex up 21% to $2.9 billion
On February 6, 2014, Vodafone Group plc CEO Vittorio Colao said: “Project Spring, £7 billion organic investment program, will accelerate our plans to establish stronger network and service differentiation for our customers. We will announce the preferred vendors for Project Spring in February with contracts being awarded thereafter.”
Vodafone Group Capex (capital expenditure) rose 20.7 percent to $2.9 billion (£1.8 billion) in the third quarter of fiscal 2014.
Also read: Vodafone Group Capex to go up by $1.6 billion to $11 billion by 2016 March
Vodafone earlier said the incremental investment for Project Spring of £0.5 billion is expected within the current financial year.
Several vendors are actively looking for Vodafone Project Spring too boost their revenue in 2014 and beyond.
Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) is betting big on Vodafone’s $11.2 billion Project Spring project and telecoms in Japan and South Korea, where carriers have been upgrading their infrastructure.
Also read: NSN CEO Rajeev Suri: Vodafone Project Spring to lift Capex in Europe
As per the deal with Ericsson, Vodafone will aim at improving network quality and provide superior end-user performance.
This network transformation contract includes both products and services.
Both coverage and capacity will be the main focus of Project Spring. Ericsson’s service professionals will transform the Vodafone network into a market leading high-performance network for mobile broadband with full 4G LTE support.
The products part of the agreement include Ericsson’s RBS 6000 portfolio as well as Ericsson’s unique Antenna Integrated Radio (AIR) product.
Hans Vestberg, president and CEO, Ericsson, said: “We have been a trusted partner of Vodafone for 30 years and we are delighted to continue and expand our relationship with this latest award under Project Spring”
Ericsson services professionals will help Vodafone address all of the challenges associated with deploying 2G/3G/4G networks, assuming responsibility for everything from planning, end-to-end network rollout, tuning and optimization.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
