Vodafone is investing heavily in 4G LTE services, awards $300 million contract to Ericsson

Vodafone is investing heavily in the deployment of its 4G LTE network in India. The most recent deployment contract has been awarded to Ericsson and is worth $300 million.

The Economic Times reports that the contract (around Rs 2,000 crore) relates to the deployment of 4G services in the UP West, Rajasthan, Odisha, North East and Assam telecom zones.

Earlier, Vodafone had given out a similar Rs 3,600 crore contract to Nokia and similar such contracts to Huawei and others as well. These contracts cover various telecom circles and include Karnataka, Kerala and Delhi.

Ericsson is a Swedish company that manufactures telecom equipment. Speaking to ET, an unnamed source tells the publication that Ericsson will deploy the network by Q3 2017 and that it’s radio equipment will improve energy efficiency by 50 percent.

Vodafone is facing stiff competition from new entrant Reliance Jio and is currently in talks with Idea Cellular for a merger. The two telecom operators suffered a major loss in revenue last year owing to Jio’s entry into the space.

Rival Airtel is still going strong, though it did suffer a 55 percent reduction in profits over the same period.

Disclaimer: Reliance Jio is owned by Reliance Industries, who also own Network18, the publisher of Firstpost and tech2.