Airtel Chooses Ericsson For 4G Expansion

Sunil Mittal-led Airtel has opted to team up with Swedish gear maker Ericsson to expand and modernise its 4G network in Rajasthan circle. While doing so, Airtel has parted ways (at least in Rajasthan) with China’s Huawei. Airtel has struck a deal with Ericsson in this regard. Ericsson will be deploying voice over LTE (VoLTE) services for Airtel. So far, Nokia was the only VoLTE technology provider for Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and Reliance-Jio.

The deal between Airtel and Ericsson has come right when Huawei is facing global criticism for allegedly being close to the Chinese government. There are voices from many countries that allege that Huawei is involved in snooping. This includes the USA.

US President Donald Trump has openly said a few months ago that the USA is not doing business with Huawei. Trump had even said that Huawei was causing national security concern for the US.

“It’s a national security concern. Huawei is a big concern of our military, of our intelligence agencies. And we are not doing business with Huawei,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Huawei has a near-monopoly on 5G technology deployment across the globe.

The US has been pressuring countries across the world, including India to keep Huawei away from 5G technology deployment within their borders. There hasn’t yet been a concrete official response from India on this issue.

Media reports in India suggest that pricing has been a factor behind Ericsson trumping Huawei in clinching the deal with Airtel in Rajasthan.

Airtel’s Sunil Mittal in past, has publicly backed Huawei. Airtel has said that Huawei’s 3G and 4G products were better than Ericsson and Nokia. However, it has parted ways with Huawei in Rajasthan.―India TV News