New Delhi, June 30 (IANS): Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel on Tuesday said it has signed a deal with Finnish telecom equipment firm Nokia Networks to roll out its 3G network in five new telecom circles and expand the existing network in three circles.

Under the four-year contract, Nokia will provide its radio elements and services expertise to power Airtel's infrastructure.

In a statement, Airtel said the deal includes network planning, optimisation, implementation and operations, project management and care services including hardware and software maintenance as well as competence development.

The companies have agreed to work on a software-defined radio platform complemented with Flexi Lite Base Station - a small all-in-one base station optimized for indoor and outdoor micro-cell deployments with superior capacity and coverage in densely-crowded areas.

The scope of work also includes highly scalable and flexible multi-technology and usage of all-IP multicontroller RNC with a cloud-ready virtualized OSS - for effective and consolidated monitoring and optimization.

"With this project, we have further strengthened Bharti's 3G proposition in 8 business-critical circles in India including 5 new circles," Nokia Networks vice president and India head Sandeep Girotra said in a statement.