Ericsson with an aim to cut short the competitive advantage gained by Chinese companies which till now went unchallenged as the Swedish vendors extended a USD one billion credit financing scheme to Russia’s MTS for purchase of equipment.

Ericsson’s credit to MTS is backed by Sweden’s Export Credit Agency.

The credit will be extended in two phases, the first one of $ 429 million with maturity up to June 2019 and the second one of value $ 646 million with maturity upto September 2020. These will be linked to equipment purchases made in 2009-2011 period.

The concept of credit financing was mainly aggressively pushed by Chinese vendors Huawei and particularly ZTE last year when the global economy went into a slowdown and operators found arranging for funds a hurricane task. ZTE has acquired $10 billion credit line from China Exim Bank to be offered as loans to its clients.