Indian mobile operator Shyam Telelink has chosen Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei and ZTE as its vendors for its multi-billion dollar CDMA 800MHz network investment. The operator – majority owned by Russian conglomerate Sistema – has previously said it will invest at least US$5 billion in expanding the nationwide network. Shyam Telelink currently only operates in the single region of Rajasthan, with a subscriber base of 102,000 according to Wireless Intelligence, but has been awarded spectrum in 19 telecommunications circles, covering 27 Indian states.

The exact size of the orders were not disclosed by the operator, but reports suggest ZTE won the largest portion of the total deal. Each vendor will be allocated a certain geographical region in India for the deployment of equipment. In April it was reported that Sistema’s goal is to become a top five Indian mobile player with 60 million subscribers by 2017 via a mixture of organic growth and acquisitions.