Following the recent Managed Services contract with Ericsson, this deal further reinforces the long-term partnership between the companies covering infrastructure as well as telecom services. The Intelligent Network and charging solution for Bharti is part of an end-to-end solution from Ericsson, where consulting and systems integration services make it all work seamlessly in Bharti's existing environment.

"Bharti and Ericsson are today taking another step in strengthening the partnership between our two companies, enabling a faster and seamless roll-out of market leading voice and data services. Ericsson's Intelligent Network based charging solution will enable Bharti to offer converged services to its post and prepaid subscribers in the near future," says Jan Campbell, Head of Ericsson Market Unit India.

"With this agreement Bharti will benefit from a single vendor 'all India' prepaid service with a consistent feature set and timely implementation of products and features across India," says Manoj Kohli, President-Mobility, Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd. "The cooperation with Ericsson providing unique bonus and promotion features, comprehensive data charging components and ease of integration will ensure that we maintain and increase our leadership in the Indian prepaid market."

Ericsson is the world leader in Charging System/PrePaid System, with 100 customers across 70 countries using Ericsson solutions. Globally, a substantial share of mobile prepaid users totaling more than 130 million subscribers are connected to Ericsson Charging Systems. Over 250 customers in more than 90 countries have adopted Ericsson's Intelligent Network solutions with over 500 applications deployed worldwide.

 

Vivienne Almqvist, Ericsson Communications

Phone: +46 70 526 2231

E-mail: press.relations@ericsson.com

Jatin Ahluwalia, Marketing Communications Manager, India & Sri Lanka

Phone: +91 9810049999

E-mail: jatin.ahluwalia@ericsson.com

Ericsson's Charging Solution includes Charging System and Multi Mediation, providing unique functionality, as well as systems integration services for seamless integration of solutions into the operator's existing environment. It enables operators to handle their postpaid and prepaid users in the same system, leveraging on investments already made in business support systems and eliminating the need for a separate billing system.

Ericsson's Intelligent Networks (IN) portfolio consists of a flexible platform and a variety of value-added services that can be delivered on top of today's and tomorrow's fixed and mobile networks. It enables the evolution of existing operator services, protecting and growing existing revenue streams towards tomorrow's evolved networks. The Ericsson IN services portfolio contains both Enterprise solutions as well as mass-market targeted end-user services.

Bharti Tele-Ventures is India's leading private sector provider of telecommunications services with an aggregate of 7.7 million customers as of end of April '04, consisting of over 7 million mobile customers. The Company today offers mobile services in fifteen out of 23 circles in India. The Company also provides fixed - line services in 5 circles.

The company complements its mobile and fixed-line services with national and international long distance services. The company also has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai, which connects the submarine cable connecting Chennai and Singapore. The company provides reliable end-to-end data and enterprise services to the corporate customers by leveraging its nationwide fibre optic backbone, last mile connectivity in fixed-line and mobile circles, VSATs, ISP and international bandwidth access through the gateways and landing station. For more information, visit www.bhartiteleventures.com