Ericsson India to boost manufacturing

NEW DELHI: Betting big on the booming telecom industry in India — Ericsson India, is all set to increase its focus towards manufacturing side of its business activity. As part of its broader strategy to increase focus for its India operations, the company is specifically looking forward to adding the 'radio base station' manufacturing capability at its existing Jaipur plant.

"India is the most vibrant market now and we want to consolidate our efforts to increase the focus over here. We would be manufacturing radio base stations for the Indian market. We would be testing our equipment with some Indian operators and then would start full manufacturing," informed Ericsson India Pvt Ltd MD, Jan Campbell.

The company's manufacturing plant — located in Jaipur manufactures core network systems for a number of operators and service providers. The company is also looking forward to increasing its subscriber base from a present 44 million to over 100 million subscribers by the end of 2006. "As we increase our focus in this part of the world, we are looking for an exponential increase in our subscriber base — over 100 million by 2006 and close to 200 million by the end of 2008," Campbell explained.

With regards to managed services, the company provides its expertise for 12 such networks in India and is in the process of adding three more networks into its kitty. "We have over six million subscribers with 12 networks that we manage. Moving forward we would be adding three more networks to this," he added.

As the company devises its strategy to further realize India's potential in the telecom segment, it is likely to increase its Indian headcount from the present figure of 800 people to more than 1,000 by the end of this year.