Chinese telecom firm Huawei has bagged a deal from Uninor to modernise the latter’s existing telecom infrastructure across the circles. With the help of this contract, Uninor also intends to make its 4G network available in six circles – Uttar Pradesh East, Uttar Pradesh West, Bihar (including Jharkhand), Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra, reported the Economic Times.

Telewings COO Tanveer Mohammad said, “By 2017, we will move completely to IP network and will be ready to embrace big data era”.

“We have extended our partnership with Huawei to modernise our network by making it future ready as well as manage it. We will be investing Rs 1,200 crore in this project”, Telewings Communications Services CEO Vivek Sood said. It plans to soon start services in Assam as well.

According to Uninor, they had expanded its network coverage last year by 30% and added 5000 sites across its six operational circles taking the network coverage to almost 24000 sites. “This is the largest deal in the Indian telecom industry and also within the Telenor group”.

“With this ambitious drive, we will be able to offer any advanced internet service to our customers and provide a superior experience both on voice and internet”.

Under the current programme Uninor will benefit from Huawei’s “managed services” delivery system integrating multi-vendors that includes swapping of existing network with new and modern equipment, planning and optimisation, maintenance services and customer experience management.

“We are glad to partner with Huawei on this transformational project that builds our network to be future ready”.

Adding more about the deal between Uninor and Huawei, the Chinese company will be modernising 5,000 of the sites this years and the remaining 19,000 sites will be modernised next year, i.e., 2016. “With our cutting-edge NGN and customer-centric model we will enable Uninor to a smooth transition towards future technologies”, said Baker Zhou, Vice President, Huawei.

Sood said that the company is looking at expanding services in other parts of the country but the final decision will depend on spectrum price and market scenario. A unified licence allows airwaves to be used to offer any technology 2G, 3G or 4G.

Last month, Uninor said it posted 9 percent increase in revenue in the quarter ending June 2015 over same quarter past year.