Ericsson to make base stations, switches in India

MUMBAI: The Swedish telecommunications major Ericsson will be setting up an R&D facility in Chennai as well as a Global Services Delivery Center (GSDC) in Gurgaon as part of its expansion plan in India that will run into a “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Besides, the company is also upgrading its manufacturing facility in Rajasthan to make mobile base stations and switches, Ericsson’s CEO, Carl-Henric Svanberg said. The company has already invested around $100 million in India, he added.

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The company’s R&D facility in Chennai will be involved in cutting edge technology, in areas such as service layer and value-added services. The company's association with TCS and Wipro, to which it has outsourced work, would also continue, he said.

The manufacturing facility, the first in the country by any world telecom infrastructure major, will also be the first to make base station controllers and mobile switching centers domestically.

This will make Ericsson self-sufficient for its domestic requirements of switches and base stations. Already, the company is setting up one base station every 45 minutes in India, he said.

Svenberg said in company’s worldwide operations, services constitute 28 percent of Ericsson's total revenues, and this is growing, at 30 percent year-on-year- basis. Ericsson has a workforce of 1,500 in India.