Bharti Airtel today said it has signed a managed services contract for its value added services with group company Comviva Technologies. The three-year deal will see Comviva managing Airtel’s 2000+ VAS nodes from various partners. Financials of the deal were not disclosed. Comviva was known as Bharti Telesoft Ltd till April 2009. Apart from Bharti, Sequoia Capital and Cisco Systems (NSDQ: CSCO) are investors in Comviva. In a statement to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Bharti said it was the first telecom operator in the world to have a separate managed services contract for its VAS portfolio.

Airtel has partnered Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Siemens to manage its network and IBM for IT management. In April, it formed a JV with Alcatel Lucent to manage its broadband and fixed line operations. It also signed a $500 million, five-year deal with the JV.

“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…” Atul Bindal, president, mobile services at Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

• Bharti Airtel Forms JV With Alcatel-Lucent To ‘Transform’ Broadband, Fixed Line Services