Ericsson bags multi-billion-dollar RAN deal in India

That's actually something of an understatement: Ericsson's press release is even worded in a very similar way to the one published by Nokia in November, which has now been updated to include currency details, incidentally. More on that in a moment.

Ericsson said that under the terms of the new deal it will deploy centralised RAN and Open RAN-ready solutions that will help Bharti Airtel increase coverage and capacity on its network. It will also upgrade the software on 4G radios it has already installed for the telco, giving a boost to customer experience.

"This deployment will enable us to further improve the speed, reliability, and coverage of our network, ensuring an exceptional experience for our customers," said Airtel's CTO Randeep Sekhon.

"This partnership extension reflects our shared vision to build a robust 4G and 5G infrastructure for Bharti Airtel to serve the connectivity needs of its customer base – including the new 5G use cases as they emerge," added Andres Vicente, Head of Ericsson South-east Asia, Oceania and India.

All pretty standard stuff. What Vincente did not say – of course – is that the deal will give Ericsson's balance sheet a welcome boost. In July the vendor pointed to challenging market conditions in the second half of the year, in part due to the slowing pace of telco investments in India. Its Q2 numbers showed a 44% on-year decline in sales at its South East Asia, Oceania and India division to 7.7 billion kronor (just over US$700 million), hit by declining network sales in India after record spending levels in 2023.

As Reuters pointed out when it heard advance whisperings of this new Ericsson/Bharti deal in October, much of the new deployment will come in 2025, which should mean the kit maker's numbers look stronger in India in the coming quarters.

Indeed, it also secured part of the US$3.6 billion 4G equipment order announced by Vodafone Idea in September, which will also make an impact on its earnings from the Indian market going forward. Nokia and Samsung have also snagged their share of that pot.

Like Ericsson, both have struggled in India of late. As the Economic Times reported, the South Korean vendor's most recent full-year results showed its slowest sales growth in India for eight years, although admittedly much of that was linked to a stagnant smartphone market.

Nokia has been talking up its India presence in recent months, mainly as a way of distracting attention away from that now infamous RAN contract loss with A&T in the US.

It trumpeted its own "multi-billion" 4G and 5G deal with Bharti Airtel last month. At the time we pointed to an omission in its announcement: there was no mention of currency. However, it's worth noting that since then the Finnish firm has amended its release to include a reference to US dollars, which presumably puts it on a similar level to Ericsson with regard to money coming in from Bharti.

Whatever the proportion of Bharti Airtel's network upgrade spend they have each bagged, both vendors now have more reason to be optimistic about India going into 2025.