The Hindu : Business : ITI Mankapur unit to make mobile equipment

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Thursday, Jul 07, 2005

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ITI Mankapur unit to make mobile equipment

Special Correspondent

Sonia Gandhi to inaugurate the new facility today

NEW DELHI: United Progressive Alliance Chairperson Sonia Gandhi will inaugurate on Thursday the mobile equipment manufacturing facility of Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) at Mankapur in Uttar Pradesh, marking the rejuvenation of the largest telecom company as part of the Government's National Common Minimum Programme of reviving public sector undertakings, said official sources.

This is the first among six units earmarked for revival through a large number of transfer of technology agreements, mostly with foreign companies including one from China. The Government has already allocated Rs. 1,000 crore for the phased revival of all the units. At Mankapur, the existing infrastructure has been augmented with a capital expenditure of Rs. 38 crore. The capacity will be further enhanced with incremental capital expenditure of Rs. 7 crore by September.

Alcatel technology

Alcatel of France is the technological partner for the Mankapur unit. Incidentally, the same company was behind an earlier collaboration that resulted in the setting up of the plant to manufacture digital exchanges (switches) in 1982.

In addition, the Government plans to set up a three million line GSM equipment manufacturing facility at ITI's Raebareli unit. It will also take up production of towers, shelters and power plants used for setting up mobile networks. The Bangalore unit will make CDMA infrastructure equipment and handsets (in collaboration with ZTE of China), the Palakkad plant would fabricate the next-generation network products (technology transfer with Tekelec of the U.S.) and the Naini plant (U.P.) would make optical equipment in collaboration with Tejas.

ITI has set its sights on manufacturing wide band wireless mobile equipment (Wimax) at Naini and has shortlisted Siemens for technology transfer. Alactel's Belgium company has been approached for making ADSL equipment at the Raebareli unit.

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