ITI will be able to produce 4G, 5G equipment in a few months: Tech Mahindra

IT company Tech Mahindra is in advance stage of sharing technology with ITI Limited and the state-run electronics manufacturing entity will be ready to make 4G and 5G equipment in a few months, a senior official of the Mahindra group firm said.

The country's potential to produce talent and software at large scale, coupled with geo-political scenario with China, presents a wonderful opportunity for India to indigenise technologies, Tech Mahindra network services CEO Manish Vyas told PTI.

In June, the company signed an agreement with ITI Limited for development of 4G and 5G technologies.

"We are in the stages of exchanging design, starting to plan and also doing a couple of test runs and trials based on the technology that they are looking to manufacture. Pretty advanced stages, it's not something that will take years but months for them to start doing it and of course, it depends on how quickly they start winning business in this area," Vyas said.

He said the partnership to exchange technology with ITI is in line with the government's strong desire to get back the state-run company in manufacturing high-end technology products.

"We are going to be helping them with the reference design with the transfer of technology that will enable them to put together the process and the plans to start manufacturing the radio units which are very specific to both 4G and 5G going forward, to an architecture which is an open source, open radio access network-based architecture," he said.

Under government rule, ITI gets some quota to provide equipment that can be installed in the network of public sector telecom companies BSNL and MTNL.

ITI has also won a ₹7,796 crore contract to build communication networks for the Defence sector.

Vyas said ITI getting back into high-end manufacturing will be a wonderful opportunity for them and other manufacturers of India.

"This (India) market will require hundreds of thousands of radio units in the next few years globally. Millions I would say, and it will require a facility that people can trust, a country that people can trust, in terms of security from a data standpoint, I think it's a wonderful job. Our partnership is built around enabling them to be able to get back to manufacturing and to seize this moment and opportunity," he said.

Tech Mahindra is already working with Japan's Rakuten Mobile on development of 5G technology.

Vyas said that the company will not directly get into telecom equipment manufacturing but support companies worldwide in developing their network gears.

"Tech Mahindra today works for every single major telecom firm outside China. Every single major service provider anywhere in the world, in every country that we care for, in the sense we operate in, in Africa and Latin America, in Europe and Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, Japan, America, Canada," he said.

Vyas said that all the top three or four service providers in each of the countries where Tech Mahindra operates are its customers.

"It gives us an opportunity to participate with 150 operators globally. The world of opportunity exists for us across the board," he said.