Nortel lands a deal worth more than US$100 million with India’s largest telecom services provider. The giant network equipment maker reports it has signed an agreement with state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), which has more than 20 million cellular subscribers, to provide GSM cellphone connectivity across southern India. Nortel currently helps BSNL provide mobile service to roughly seven million subscribers in the southern and eastern parts of India. “India represents an enormous opportunity for Nortel in the carrier space, with its consistently high growth rates and increasingly mobile population,” says Nortel carrier networks president Richard Lowe. “We have redesigned our GSM portfolio with this kind of opportunity in mind, making our solution much more cost-competitive, without compromising the performance, capacity and coverage for which Nortel is renowned.” Nortel has already begun work on the BSNL network expansion, which is expected to be completed near the end of 2008.