Nordic telecoms operator TeliaSonera will buy USD 150 million worth of equipment from Nokia Siemens Networks to expand services in Uzbekistan, its Uzbek subsidiary said on Friday.

"The contract has been signed with Nokia Siemens Networks. It costs about USD 150 million," said Aleksei Minin, spokesman for TeliaSonera's subsidiary, Coscom - Uzbekistan's third-largest GSM operator.

The new equipment will help to expand Coscom's network and launch GPRS and EDGE data transmission technology in the Central Asian state in 2008.

TeliaSonera paid USD 292 million for U.S.-based MCT Corp, Coscom's parent company, in July.

Earlier, Coscom said TeliaSonera would spend USD 160 million to upgrade its network in Uzbekistan, the Cental Asian nation of 27 million people.

Coscom services 10 percent of Uzbekistan's 4.57 million mobile subscribers. Its main competitors, Russian cell phone operators Mobile TeleSystems and Vimpelcom , control 50.1 and 35.6 percent of the country's telecom market respectively.

Reuters