‘Close partnerships between the government and companies will boost telecom manufacturing in India’
Brief us on NSN’s manufacturing facility.
In October 2008, Nokia Siemens Networks established its manufacturing facility at Oragadam near Chennai with an investment pipeline of $70 mn spread over 3 years. Nokia Siemens Networks expanded this facility in August 2011 from 35,000 to 55,000 sq meter, and increasing the number of product lines to 33. The company manufactures and distributes its new multi-radio and LTE products, among other equipment such as GSM and LTE-ready 3G base stations and its FlexiPacket radio. The manufacturing facility offers energy-efficient equipment to reduce the carbon footprint of new network deployments.
What percentage of your products are exported?
Over the years, the capability and capacity expansion of this facility have significantly increased, allowing Nokia Siemens Networks to export approximately 37% (in terms of units) of the facility’s production across the globe.
How do you plan to achieve value addition of 45-65%?
We have invested heavily in building a world-class local manufacturing operations, and our facility covers the complete gamut of manufacturing process—from SMT all the way to box build and configuration. The company has played an instrumental role in building a local ecosystem comprising of indigenous suppliers for our requirements. We continue to work with the government and the local suppliers to increase the value of local content in manufacturing. Having a strong local component supply base is critical to achieve higher level of local value addition.
How can you create a supply chain ecosystem?
Companies like Nokia Siemens Networks are procuring several items from the domestic suppliers. This, in turn, is helping in building a local ecosystem. There is, however, a clear need to have collaborative efforts from both the industry and government to further focus and bring in rest of supply chain in high-value semiconductors, discrete semiconductors, volume passive parts, and complex PCBs into India.
We are hopeful that with positive policy framework and congenial industry environment, partnerships with local companies will further increase and lead towards a telecom strong supply chain in the country.
What are the challenges with respect to telecom manufacturing?
A more favorable policy framework would enable further growth of India’s telecom manufacturing sector. Close partnerships between the government, companies, and the academia can eliminate several infrastructural bottlenecks to boost India’s competitiveness as a telecom manufacturing hub in the region. Subex has bagged a 5-year contract with MTN, the telecom service provider in Africa and the Middle East. As part of the contract, Subex will deploy Revenue Operations Center (ROC) fraud management and revenue assurance solutions across 14 networks of the MTN Group. Subex will deploy solutions individually in each of the operating countries, with a central program office from Subex. Nazir Patel, group CFO, MTN Group says, “We were looking for a partner to collaborate with us in long term, to address our revenue fortification requirements. Subex was selected for this deployment after a highly competitive bidding process.”