Mumbai, Feb 11 (IANS): Reliance Communications has given a $1 billion contract to Ericsson to manage its network in orthern and western India over the next eight years.

As per the contract, Ericsson will manage the day-to-day operations across wireline and wireless networks and take over responsibility for field maintenance, network operations and operational planning of Reliance Communications 2G, CDMA and 3G mobile networks.

"Given the complexity of network increasing with platforms, technologies and application offerings, we are banking on the experience, innovation and technical expertise of Ericsson to improve the productivity of our network and ensure that it delivers to its full potential," Gurdeep Singh, chief executive officer for wireless business at Reliance Communications, said in a statement Monday.

Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications said it will benefit from Ericsson's "proven world-class processes, methods and tools" and the partnership will allow Reliance Communications to free up resources to focus on user experience, as well as improving innovation power, agility and speed across the specified geographies.

Reliance Communications' infrastructure covers 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages in India to which it offers converged services including voice, data and video.

As part of the deal, Ericsson will streamline Reliance Communications' operations by bringing all aspects of fibre, tower operations, wireless networks and wireline access networks to Reliance Communications wireless and global enterprise business, across differentiated product lines.

"Ericsson will also drive a modernisation of the tools, processes and best practices that are applied across the business resulting in operational efficiencies by managing cost through consolidation," a company statement said.