Vodafone India selects Huawei for managed services
India’s second largest operator Vodafone awarded a three-year managed services contract worth $180 million to $220 million to Chinese equipment vendor Huawei.

The deal reportedly covers five service areas, including three regions in south India that were previously served by rival Nokia, according to the Economic Times.

A source told the Times that about 1,000 staff will be involved in the project, which will see employees from its existing vendor move to Huawei.

Thailand’s AIS, dtac launch interconnected VoLTE
Thailand’s two largest mobile players – AIS and dtac – introduced interconnected voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) service.

All three of the country’s mobile operators, including True Move, have launched VoLTE, but the service was previously only available within each operator’s network, the Nation said.

Nearly a quarter of AIS’ 40 million customers are on 4G plans, while 17 per cent of dtac’s 25 million subscriber are on LTE.

Airtel selects Nokia for 4G expansion
India’s leading mobile operator Bharti Airtel contracted Finland’s Nokia to expand its 4G network across nine service areas to boost capacity to keep up with soaring data demand.

The agreement with Nokia will see it expand the deployment of 4G technology in three new regions in addition to six areas it already serves.

Nokia will deploy its FDD-LTE and TD-LTE technology and expand the operator’s 3G network in eight of the territories as part of the rollout and modernisation of legacy 2G base stations. The rollout uses the vendor’s radio access with Single RAN technology for FDD-LTE and TD-LTE. Nokia also will provide professional services, including network integration and network planning and optimisation.

Telstra works with vendor partners on gigabit LTE
Australia’s largest mobile operator Telstra is partnering with Qualcomm, Ericsson and Netgear to develop a gigabit-class LTE device and commercially ready network.

A Netgear router based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 LTE modem and Wi-Fi equipment will enable download speeds of up to 1Gb/s over Telstra’s upgraded LTE network, which was supplied by Ericsson, the companies said in a statement.

The router is the first consumer end device capable of reaching gigabit LTE download speeds, Qualcomm said.

Gigabit download speeds are achieved through a combination of dual-carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO on two aggregated carriers plus 2×2 MIMO on the third carrier, and 256-QAM higher order modulation, the companies said.

Telstra plans to complete comprehensive device, network and user testing ahead of commercial launch in the coming months.