NEW DELHI: UTStarcom has announced a $24 million contract with Indian telecoms BSNL to supply multi-service access network (MSAN) equipment and support design, engineering and installation.

The public-sector company, BSNL is upgrading its network to offer next generation multi-media services to its customers and this entails migrating existing PSTN/ISDN customers to next generation network (NGN) to enable supplementary services using Internet Protocol (IP) along with basic telephony.

The upgrade will cover broadband lines for a wide swath of residential and enterprise customers across western and northern regions of India that include large urban centers such as Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakand and Chattisgargh.

Recently, the Chinese telecom network vendor Huawei announced its NGN switch deal with BSNL to migrate its traditional telephone exchanges to IP based NGN. The IP transition will be in phases and will cover all major telecom circles of BSNL.

As part of the NGN deal, BSNL will migrate four million existing PSTN subscribers to IMS platform and offer next generation services besides voice, such as video, IPTV, IP-Centrex and MMVC. One million lines will be replaced in Phase-1 and 3 million lines in Phase-2 to migrate existing four million PSTN subscribers to IMS (IP Multi-media Subsystem) platform.

UTStarcom is working with Indian government-owned telecom equipment vendor ITI for the BSNL network upgrade.

BSNL chairman and MD R K Upadhyay said: “UTStarcom has been a reliable partner in the past, and we have deployed a large number of their broadband access products on our network.”

UTStarcom India claims that it already holds 35 percent share for broadband Internet network equipment.”

There are approximately 15 million wireline broadband customers in India, of which UTStarcom has supplied more than six million DSL ports.

UTStarcom’s customers in India include telecom service providers, such as Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications.

Recently, UTStarcom launched a major sales and marketing initiative to promote its latest broadband products to carriers in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific.