Reliance communication would soon be closing one of the largest outsourcing deals in the Indian telecom space which is being pegged at around $500-600 million (Rs 2,500-3,000 crore).
The deal would be related to capital expenditures in operations & maintenance. France based telecom infrastructure provider Alactel-Lucent is said to be the frontrunner for the deal.Earlier Unitech Wireless awarded $500 million network contract to Ericsson.
The deal may be transferred to joint venture between Alcatel-Lucent and RCom formed in May 2008.RCom is on major expansion plans off lately especially for its GSM service and may transfer some of its resources for better functioning of the contract.
The work for bidder would be to maintain RCom’s GSM and optical fibre cable services along with managing and strengthening RCom’s 175,000 km global optical fibre cable (OFC) systems.
This strategy of awarding outsourcing deal for maintenance and building of telecom infrastructure falls in line with strategy adopted by other Indian Telcos.Indian Telcos are seen outsourcing their BPO operations along with Infrastructure related branches to concentrate on their core operations of selling Telecom services.Earlier companies were also seen awarding mega deals to some Asian based Cell phone makers like ZTE and Xl telecom.
The multi-year outsourcing deals are also seen as a hedge against cost escalation issues which may arise in future.Many companies like Alactel-Lucent,Ericsson and Siemens have working presence in India and are amongst major bidders for operational related contracts whereas companies like IBM,Wipro and Infosys are major frontrunners for BPO outsourcing deals.
The deals of such sheer size are awarded mostly by bidding and as such are cost effective. This deal would further help RCom to isolate operations & maintenance from its core business operations.
