Telenor’s Indian unit Uninor has awarded Huawei a $300 million contract to expand its 2G network across six service areas, reports the Economic Times.

Under the three-year deal, Huawei will upgrade about 24,000 base station sites and will also make the operator’s network 4G ready. The vendor claimed the network can be upgraded to 4G with minor software and hardware updates, once Uninor has approval to offer 4G services.

Uninor is the seventh largest mobile player in India with 48 million connections (all 2G). It has added almost nine million connections over the past year, according to GSMA Intelligence.

The operator also is deploying a network in the eastern state of Assam, built by Nokia Networks, which is expected to start operations soon, the Economic Times added.

Uninor plans to move to 4G and has conducted trials using the 1.8GHz band but first needs to convert its permit into a unified licence, the Economic Times said. A unified licence allows spectrum to be used for 2G, 3G or 4G services. Uninor already owns 1.8GHz spectrum, so won’t need to purchase new airwaves to launch 4G service.

In addition to modernising the operator’s network by installing single RAN base stations, Huawei said it will provide managed services covering network planning and optimisation, maintenance services and customer experience management.