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Reliance Communications provides integrated telecommunication services for more than 36 million subscribers across India, including mobile, fixed-line, and broadband. Reliance is the largest CDMA operator in the Indian market with a market share of 85% and an overall market share of more than 25% of the Indian mobile market.

ALL-IP is the secret

In India profits are shrinking due to competition, which means Reliance must reduce network operation costs, while still expanding service to improve their overall competitiveness. Reliance must simultaneously meet the demand for increased bandwidth, ensure EV-DO evolution and protect their existing investment. To accomplish this, they decided to move towards ALL IP and introduce UMB, a super mobile broadband technology, using a next generation CDMA system. Huawei proposed a leading mobile IP solution to Reliance, including IP base stations, IP transmission and an IP platform, with an end to end planning and design process. Huawei calculated optimum IP port quantities and broadband requirements of each site in depth.

Huawei's ALL IP solution protects Reliance's existing investments and also allows end users to enjoy better services at the same price.

Rapid deployment is necessary

In India, mobile users are growing at a rate of 166% per year. Facing heavy competitive pressure, Reliance must deploy the network rapidly and put it into commercial service as soon as possible to ensure its dominant position. Within 10 days, Huawei achieved the first connection and then delivered up to 50 base stations per day. By early June of 2007, all the seven core network sites were in operation. The rapid deployment was accomplished by streamlining the schedules for test, engineering, version control and feature analysis.

Innovative solutions conquer tough environment

The average temperature is 45ºC in northern India in the summer and power is unreliable. Most network equipment will fail in this environment, but not Huawei's innovative BTS3606C. Operation at these sites has been trouble-free since installation. In addition to temperature and power challenges, the physical terrain is also complex, so easy installation and OM is required. The Huawei BTS3606AC not only deals with complex terrain, but also has high reliability (IP 55) even without good infrastructure.

Huawei's base stations are based on ALL IP broadband platform and can reduce transmission costs by 60% ~ 80% for the entire network which allows maximum protection for existing investments. In addition, Huawei's base stations cover up to 1,000 square kilometers for each region so the number of BTS can be reduced as much as 50%. Finally, the Huawei BSC can support VoIP (Voice over IP), video phone, mobile broadband multimedia, so Reliance can offer integrated services to expand their market and their revenues.

Brand vision becomes a reality

Huawei's solution relieved the pressure that Reliance was facing from the rapid increase in subscribers, and has enhanced Reliance's brand by reducing churn rates. In addition, Reliance's CAPEX and OPEX were reduced.

Huawei's series of base stations have expanded Reliance's network coverage from densely-populated urban areas to sparsely-populated mountainous areas in India, while reducing network risks brought about by challenging environments. This has enabled Reliance to realize high network availability and gain increasing loyalty from their users. Furthermore, fast network deployment has allowed Reliance to successfully attract more subscribers and gain a larger market share.

Also, Huawei's mature solution was able to protect Reliance's existing investments and enhance its capabilities in future-oriented service expansion. Reliance has constructed an ALL IP network capable of smooth evolution into the future UMB, which will provide its subscribers with better service and more reliable network performance at no additional cost, thus allowing growth and brand vision to become a reality.

Milestones

• On December 29, 2006, Huawei signed the contract for CDMA commercial application, taking up a 60% share of the network project. This marked Huawei's large-scale entry into the mainstream CDMA market in India.
• On April 2, 2007,Reliance's CDMA network was officially put into operation.
• At the beginning of May, 2007, Huawei won Reliance's contract for CDMA network expansion. Responsible for supplying and constructing nearly 9,000 base stations. Huawei secured the #1 position among telecom suppliers in the Asia-Pacific region for CDMA network construction in 2007.