Ericsson, the world's largest cellular mobile network equipment maker, has further strengthened its position in Bangladesh by winning the country's largest-ever network expansion deal as well as clinching the lion's shares of another new network supply contract, according to highly placed sources attending the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.
Telenor, the 62 percent Norwegian owner of GP, yesterday announced its decision of awarding the US$ 150 million contract to Ericsson for expanding GrameenPhone's network. Industry insiders say that GP has planned to acquire further 12 million customers during next three years by virtue of this expansion.
Besides the sheer size of this project, Ericsson has various strategic interests in this deal. The Swedish vendor has been the sole supplier of GP's entire network since the latter's inception in 1997.
Five years later, in 2002, GP invited bids for second supplier to expand its network. Ericsson faced fierce competitions from Siemens in that event.
The Swedish vendor , however, overpowered its German rival by offering predatory discounts to GP at the final negotiation and retained its dominance.
Three years later, in late 2005, GP again invited bids to further expand its network after acquiring additional radio frequencies from the regulator.
This time Ericsson faced additional competition from Nokia, the world's second largest mobile network equipment maker. Through another contract the Finnish vendor made aggressive inroad by replacing GP's text message processing equipment last year.
Ericsson well received that cautionary signal and took a deep breath before racing against Siemens and Chinese Huawei along with Nokia to clinch the GP's 12 million-lines expansion deal. After a series of negotiations, the Swedish telecoms giant succeeded to protect its territory in GrameenPhone as the exclusive network equipment supplier.
WARID DEAL
Meanwhile, Warid Telecom, the sixth mobile operator in Bangladesh, has also contracted Ericsson to supply its core network equipment along with undisclosed numbers of base stations for its would be launching network.
The Abu Dhabi-based company has also engaged Nokia and Motorola to supply the remaining equipment. It will be the debut of both the vendors in the GSM mobile network market of Bangladesh.
Warid Telecom obtained the country's sixth mobile phone operating license on December 21, 2005. It has planned to acquire more than 14 million customers by December 2007. First it will launch service in 26 districts to bag 2.8 million customers by October 2006.
Then its coverage will be expanded in 22 more districts to net 3.1 million additional customers by January 2007. Consequently 13 more districts will be covered within March 2007 to bring in 3.35 million more subscribers.
Warid will cover rest of the country by December 2007 and add five million clients during those nine months.
