Finnish network vendor, Nokia, plans to double its presence at the Technology Centre in Bengaluru India. In an exclusive interview Nishant Batra, Nokia’s Chief Strategy and Technology Officer told BusinessLine they plan on significantly increasing their personnel strength at the Bengaluru-based innovation centre. For both, research and development as well as the system architecture team. “We have collaborated with the Indian Institute of Sciences for exactly this purpose,” Batra said.
As 5G rollout kicks off in India this year, Batra intends on capturing top tech talent in India to drive innovation for Nokia. As 5G beckons a myriad of new use cases and enterprise applications, Batra says that India’s tech hub will also take part in these innovations and new businesses will emerge specifically for Indian use cases. “Once 5G is launched in India, you will see a unicorn in three to four years,” he said.
Nokia established the dedicated 5G/IoT (Internet of Things) lab in Bengaluru in 2016 to work on a variety of applications, including smart cities, public safety, IoT use cases such as real time city surveillance and smart parking.
Nokia employs 15,000 people in India, across five key locations, Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai. Nokia also has project offices in 26 cities.
The telecom gear maker has also undertaken 5G trials in partnership with Indian telecom operators. Nokia conducted India’s first 5G trial in the 700 MHz bands, in partnership with Airtel in November 2021, in the outskirts of Kolkata. In the demonstration, Airtel and Nokia were able to achieve high-speed wireless broadband network coverage of 40 km between two 3GPP standard 5G sites in real-life conditions. Nokia has also demonstrated fibre-like speed connectivity using small cells and macrocells for Vodafone Idea as well.
As the demand for broadband and data consumption increases exponentially and as a result experts believe that networks must fiberise, Batra believes that at the current technological level, wireless technology poses a reasonable substitute for optical fibre. At present, approximately 35 per cent of India’s telecommunication network is fiberised, much lower than networks globally.