The Hindu : Business : ITI's GSM unit in U.P. on stream

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 08, 2005

Business

Business

ITI's GSM unit in U.P. on stream

Sonia Gandhi inaugurates the Mankapur facility

MANKAPUR (UTTAR PRADESH): : French telecom giant Alcatel will invest up to 500 million Euro (about Rs. 2,650 crore) in India over the next four years and take the headcount at its research and development facility here to 2,000.

"Alcatel will invest 400 to 500 million euro in India in the next three to four years,'' Union Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran told reporters on Thursday after the inauguration of the GSM mobile phone equipment manufacturing facility at the Mankapur unit of ITI Ltd in Gonda district of the State.

The investments by Alcatel in India will be in manufacturing, research and development and allied activities.

Alcatel now has 750 engineers in India working on new technologies. "By the end of this year or early next year we will have 2,000 people in India engaged in development efforts,'' Alcatel's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Serge Tchuruk said after the inauguration of the manufacturing facility.

Congress President and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Chairperson Sonia Gandhi inaugurated the facility.

India will emerge as a major research and development base for Alcatel, which has 16,000 engineers worldwide engaged in developing new technologies for the world market.

Chennai facility

Mr. Tchuruk said the company's joint venture with C-DoT (Centre for Development of Telematics) for developing technologies around WiMax would be functional in Chennai this month end and would have close to 500 engineers.

The GSM manufacturing at Mankapur could start only after Alcatel was convinced by Mr. Maran to transfer technology. The Government was also in talks with Alcatel to transfer technology for DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) broadband access equipment.

"We are the world leaders in DSL. We are considering transferring this technology to ITI,'' Mr. Tchuruk said.

The ADSL switches would be manufactured in the ITI's facility at Naini near Allahabad. The Government was also talking to Alcatel to transfer technology for manufacturing GSM switches, which would be manufactured at the ITI unit in Pallakkad in Kerala.

The Mankapur facility will produce ten million lines annually. It has a capacity of 2,000 base stations, which will be doubled over the coming months. ITI has a confirmed order of 30 million lines from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, and the company's facility in Raebareily would start manufacturing GSM equipment in the next two months to meet the demand.

As the manufacturing of mobile telecom equipment at ITI gathers pace, Alcatel will make India a hub for exports to the other markets across the globe.

"With ITI we will get a big market share in India. India can be an exporter of products. It can be a base for export of mobile and fixed line switches to other markets,'' the Alcatel Chairman said.

With the roadmap for revival of the company ready after the Government pumped in Rs. 1,000 crore, ITI is expecting to double its turnover in 2005-06 to Rs. 3,000 crore from Rs 1,500 crore last fiscal. Last year the company had a net loss of Rs. 250 crore but this year it hopes to be in black.

Its confirmed order book stands at Rs. 2,000 crore and is expecting an order of additional 30 million GSM lines from BSNL.

In course of restructuring ITI has brought its workforce down to 14,000 from the peak of 32,000 through natural attrition and the voluntary retirement scheme.

As the company entered high technology manufacturing, the excess staff would be trained for deployment of the equipment, a job that was earlier outsourced, Mr. Maran said. — PTI

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