HispanicBusiness

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN -- (Marketwire) -- 02/11/13 --

* Covers 100,000 km of fiber and mobile infrastructure in 11 telecomcircles, across North and West of India, including Delhi and Mumbai

* Will lead to productive integration of 5,000 employees by moving themto Ericsson - providing them global opportunities

* Integrated management to deliver world class customer experience using global expertise and bringing in operational efficiencies and cost optimization

Reliance Communications Limited, India's fully integratedtelecommunicationsservice provider, today signed an eight-year full-scope managed servicesagreement with Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) for USD 1 billion to operate andmanagethe wireline and wireless networks in the Northern and Western states ofIndia.

As per the contract, Ericsson will manage the day to day operations acrosswireline and wireless networks and will take over responsibility for fieldmaintenance, network operations and operational planning of RelianceCommunications 2G, CDMA and 3G mobile networks. This agreement is aimed tomeetthe fast evolving customer demand for communications applications andservicesin one of the world's most dynamic telecom markets.

Reliance Communications will benefit from Ericsson's proven world-classprocesses, methods and tools and the partnership will allow RelianceCommunications to free up resources to focus on user experience, as well asimproving innovation power, agility and speed across the specifiedgeographies.Reliance Communications' infrastructure covers 24,000 towns and 600,000villagesin India to which it offers converged services including voice, data andvideo.

This is one of the first converged wireless and wireline managed servicescontract in India, and one of only a handful in the world. Ericsson willstreamline Reliance Communications' operations by bringing all aspects offiber,tower operations, wireless networks and wireline access networks toRelianceCommunications' wireless and global enterprise business, acrossdifferentiatedproduct lines. Ericsson will also drive a modernization of the tools,processesand best practices that are applied across the business resulting inoperationalefficiencies by managing cost through consolidation.

Commenting on the agreement, Gurdeep Singh, Chief Executive Officer -WirelessBusiness, Reliance Communications said, "We are happy to announce ourpartnership with Ericsson to manage our wireline and wireless networkenablingus to provide a higher level of customer experience in terms of network andservices. Given the complexity of network increasing with platforms,technologies and application offerings, we are banking on the experience,innovation and technical expertise of Ericsson to improve the productivityofour network and ensure that it delivers to its full potential. We areconfidentthat they will exceed the expectations of our customers throughoptimization ofresources and provide us cost effective solutions."

Magnus Mandersson, Executive Vice President and Head of Business UnitGlobalServices, Ericsson, said; "We are excited to partner with RelianceCommunications for this strategic multi-technology managed services deal.Theincreasing uptake of new technologies requires an increased focus oncustomerexperience management in the hyper competitive and highly dynamic Indiantelecommarket. With this partnership Reliance will increase focus on their corebusiness and innovation. We are pleased to welcome more than 5,000employees whowill join us from Reliance Communications and support our long termcommitmentto India's ICT market."