The Economic Times in India cites sources close to RCom, claiming it has already inked a spectrum trading deal with Reliance Jio Infocomm, and has began discussions with Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei and ZTE about executing the contract.
The deal follows the recently announced contract wins for Finnish giant Nokia with both Bharti Airtel and Vodafone for IP multimedia system solutions deployment for VoLTE.
Bharti Airtel and Vodafone are India’s two largest telecom operators, and reports in the country claim the third largest carrier, Idea Cellular, was also reported to have opened “active talks” with Nokia for a similar deal.
Last year, Jio gave a contract worth $100 million to Nokia for pan-India VoLTE deployment. The technology will give Jio a base engine for delivering voice services as it has limited 2G and no 3G infrastructure. The mobile provider is expected to launch services soon.
RCom currently has airwaves in the 850MHz band in all 22 telecoms circles across the country, plus 2100MHz spectrum in 13 circles, which it can use to launch VoLTE services.
RCom declined to comment.
