Sino-Indian deal to modernise Lankan mobile sector

India's Bharti Airtel and China's Huawei sign a deal to modernise Lanka's mobile network, reports PK Balachandran.

India and China may view each other with suspicion in many fields, but in the Sri Lankan mobile phone sector, it is "Hindi-Chini bhai bhai".

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Bharti Airtel of India and Huawei Technologies of China have signed a deal to modernise the mobile phone services in Sri Lanka. As per the $150 million deal, signed in Colombo on Tuesday, Huawei will build and manage Bharti's GSM infrastructure in the island for the next three years.

The deal covers telecom applications and software, and will bring innovative products at an affordable price to the Sri Lankan mobile user, a press release from Huawei said.

It will enhance Bharti's competitive edge in the growing cell phone market in Sri Lanka. Specifically, Huawei's Distributed Node B will enable Bharti to deploy the network faster and most cost-effectively.

Bharti Airtel, rated as one of the best performing companies in the world, recently got a license to provide 2G and 3G mobile services in Sri Lanka. The $ 8.5 billion Huawei Technologies serves 31 of the 50 top telecom services in the world and has a presence in over 100 countries, including India,US and UK.

Bharti is the latest entrant into the booming Sri Lankan mobile sector. According to the Asian Development Bank, in 2006 alone, Foreign Direct Investment in the Sri Lankan mobile sector went up from $234 million to $480 million.