Nokia readying telecom gear for Indian summer
Nokia was increasing capacity of its optical equipment manufacturing in India under the Make in India programme, where it will add the number of modules being made from its hub in Chennai
New Delhi: Nokia will begin supplying telecom equipment designed to handle record-high temperatures in the summer months while relaying fixed broadband and 5G networks to Indian service providers.
James Watt, president of optical networks division at Nokia, told Mint in an exclusive interaction that there is rising demand among telecom service providers in India for equipment that is resilient to rising temperatures and that the Finnish manufacturer was preparing to begin deployment.
“Telcos are asking for a converged, temperature-hardened box which can handle 5G and fixed broadband and which can be installed in outdoor environment. We already have some equipment, which we can customise and roll it out in a few months,” he said.
He added Nokia was also working on cooling technologies which can help reduce power consumption on the chips installed within the equipment, as well as reduce the heat dissipated by the equipment. This, he said, would lead to lowering the overall heat level of the equipment while ensuring sustainability and continued connectivity.
Telcos were also demanding installation of its new chipset in existing equipment, that can deliver 800 Gbps over 2,000 km which can help them reduce costs, while increasing capacities and consuming less power.
“That is broadly consistent with the kind of structural traffic growth you see in these networks with the explosion of 5G, residential traffic and cloudification of large-scale data centres that are coming up in India,” he said.
Watt said that India’s telecom network was the largest in the world and service providers here are increasingly demanding more deployments of optical networks in order to support the rapid scale up of 5G services and broadband penetration.
“We see very high growth in the Indian market, to the order of 25% or so, and we’re No 1 in that market and I expect us to stay there,” he said. He added that the country was one of the major contributors to global revenues of € 1.9 billion.
Watt said that Nokia was increasing capacity of its optical equipment manufacturing in India under the Make in India programme, where it will add the number of modules being made from its hub in Chennai. The increased local production would be able to meet demand of telecom players as well as companies setting up their own data centres.
Demand for optical transport networks has also started to emerge from unconventional sources, such as hyperscalers and over-the-top or OTT players, that want to either set up their own networks or want to take capacity on lease. He added that large number of data centres coming up was leading to larger demand for cable capacities which in turn would lead to higher proliferation of landing stations.
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First Published:28 Mar 2023, 12:20 PM IST
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