Indian operator BSNL plans to spend around US$100 million on additional CDMA Wireless Local Loop (WLL) network kit across 500 towns, regional publication Mint reported today. “We would like to procure more CDMA equipment from ZTE, as it is an existing vendor, and it would help us procure fast,” the report quotes the company’s Chairman and Managing Director, Kuldeep Goyal, as stating. “We are looking to have another 7,000 base transceiver stations for the CDMA business,” he added. In October 2005 BSNL placed an order for more than two million CDMA fixed-phone lines (Wireless Local Loop) with China’s ZTE. BSNL also has a much larger GSM-based network, serving approximately 32 million subscribers. BSNL said one advantage of the new CDMA network will be deployment in areas where it has no GSM coverage. “It becomes a kind of fall-back strategy for us,” said Goyal.

The move is the latest high-profile operator development in the world’s fastest growing mobile market. According to the latest Wireless Intelligence report, India, the second largest mobile market in Asia Pacific, is on track to become the second largest mobile market in the world by the end of 2008, overtaking the US in the process. Over the last three quarters, India has been recording quarterly growth above 10% and is expected to pass 250 million cellular connections in the opening quarter of this year, adding around 90 million net additions year-on-year.