Bharti Airtel today announced, what it claims to be the first of its kind deal in the world, signing of a three year managed services contract for value added services (VAS) with sister concern Comviva.

Post deal, Comviva will manage around 2000+ of Bharti Airtel’s VAS nodes across India from various partners so as to meet defined service level agreements.

Announcing the deal, Atul Bindal, President, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel, said, “Airtel continuously strives to improve the services it provides to its customers, whilst optimizing overall business performance. With Comviva managing our full suite of value added services, we anticipate enhancements in the service experience we deliver to our customers, the range of services we are able to deploy and the speed of new service rollout - creating both enhanced customer satisfaction and a sustainable competitive advantage for Airtel in the market.”

The new move marks another industry-first by Bharti Airtel which is already being credited for being the industry first in introducing IT outsourcing within telecom industry, management of its wireless networks by vendors Ericsson & Nokia Siemens as well as the recently clicked deal with Alcatel-Lucent for management of wireline infrastructure including for broadband backbone.

Manoranjan Mohapatra, CEO, Comviva said, “With this deal, we are building on our success in providing managed services for Airtel Sri Lanka, which launched commercially in January this year and on our extensive experience in delivering managed services for a range of products. Our success with Airtel Sri Lanka, a Greenfield operation, where we manage close to thirty value added services, has given Bharti Airtel the confidence to outsource the management of its entire India VAS operations, against stringent SLAs, to Comviva. In addition to managing Airtel’s 2000 VAS nodes – from a range of partners - we will also manage the complexities associated with the emergence of multiple technologies, different standards, applications and a myriad of content to help grow Airtel’s value added service business. We see this as a landmark deal that will set a benchmark for operators globally.”