UTStarcom Wins Major Contract to Support Broadband Internet Access in India

HONG KONG, March 27, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- UTStarcom (NASDAQ: UTSI), a global telecommunications infrastructure provider, today announced a $24 million contract to support a major network enhancement for one of India's leading telecom service providers. The deal bolsters UTStarcom's position in India which has always been an important market for UTStarcom and its market-leading broadband equipment.

UTStarcom will supply multi-service access network (MSAN) equipment and support design, engineering and installation for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), a major telecom incumbent. BSNL is upgrading its network to offer Next Generation Multi-Media Services to its customers. The upgrade entails migrating existing PSTN/ISDN customers to Next Generation Network (NGN) to enable supplementary services using Internet Protocol along with basic telephony. The upgrade will cover broadband lines for a wide swath of residential and enterprise customers across western and northern regions of India that include large urban centers such as Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakand and Chattisgargh.

UTStarcom is working with ITI Limited, one of India's leading telecommunication equipment makers, for the BSNL network upgrade.

"This project takes us deeper into India's telecom market which is one of the largest, fastest growing and most competitive after undergoing successive rounds of liberalization since the 1990's," said William Wong, UTStarcom's Chief Executive Officer. "We are leveraging existing relationships with India's leading carriers and tech companies, like BSNL and ITI, to find opportunities in this country, which is poised to have one of the largest bases of Internet users worldwide."

"We are happy to have UTStarcom partner with us on this important project," said Mr. R.K.Upadhyay, Chairman and Managing Director of BSNL. "UTStarcom has been a reliable partner in the past, and we have successfully deployed a large number of their broadband access products on our network."

"UTStarcom has made a major contribution to the growth of our broadband business," said Mr. N.K.Gupta, director and BSNL board member. "This current project builds on a relationship that dates back more than a decade. I fully expect it to lead to more opportunities for collaboration in the future."

Building on UTStarcom's Telecom Market Share in India

This is the latest project for UTStarcom in India, a market where it already holds 35% share for broadband Internet network equipment. There are approximately 15 million wireline broadband customers in India, of which UTStarcom has supplied more than six million DSL ports.

UTStarcom's customers in India include leading telecom service providers, such as Airtel, the country's largest mobile service provider, and TATA Communications. BSNL has itself been a customer of UTStarcom for years, specifically using its servers, switches, broadband access, optical transmission gear and other products to support the rollout of its "Multiplay" broadband Internet service. UTStarcom supplied and maintained more than three million ports for "Multiplay."

Globalizing UTStarcom's Broadband Market Share

This contract shows the competitiveness of UTStarcom's broadband technology. The MSAN equipment is a longtime staple of UTStarcom's suite of broadband products. It is currently in use supporting carrier networks in the Philippines and several European countries.

UTStarcom has launched a major sales and marketing initiative to promote its latest bevy of broadband products to carriers in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. As part of this initiative, UTStarcom recently displayed its broadband products at Convergence India where it met with executives from BSNL and ITI, helping to cement its role on this major network upgrade.

About UTStarcom Holdings Corp.

UTStarcom (NASDAQ: UTSI) is a global telecom infrastructure provider dedicated to developing technology that will serve the rapidly growing demand for bandwidth from cloud-based services, mobile, streaming and other applications. We work with carriers globally, from Asia to the Americas, to meet this demand through a range of innovative broadband packet optical transport and wireless/fixed-line access products and solutions. The company's end-to-end broadband product portfolio, enhanced through in-house Software Defined Networking (SDN)-based orchestration, enables mobile and fixed-line network operators and enterprises worldwide to build highly efficient and resilient future-proof networks for a range of applications, including mobile backhaul, metro aggregation, broadband access and Wi-Fi data offload. Our strategic investments in media operational support service providers expand UTStarcom's capabilities in the field of next generation video platforms. UTStarcom was founded in 1991, started trading on NASDAQ in 2000, and has operating entities in Hong Kong; Tokyo, Japan; Fremont, USA; Delhi and Bangalore, India; Hangzhou, China. For more information about UTStarcom, please visit http://www.utstar.com.

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