As the country enters the 5G era, telecom equipment manufacturer HFCL Limited stated that it had received approval to utilise an incentive of up to Rs 652.79 crore as part of the government’s PLI program.As the country enters the 5G era, telecom equipment manufacturer HFCL Limited announced on Tuesday that it had received approval to apply for an incentive of up to Rs 652.79 crore as part of the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme.
On its application to participate in the PLI program, HFCL has received approval from the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), Project Management Agency (PMA), and Competent Authority designated by the Centre.
The business stated that it had committed an investment of Rs. 425 crore to the PLI scheme for the production of telecom products, such as 5G radio equipment, routers, switches, WiFi products, and backhaul radios, among other things.”This approval in the amount of Rs 652.79 crore will enable us to emerge as a front-runner in this competitive global market and assist us in improving our margins.””We are committed to investing Rs 425 crore for the development and manufacturing of futuristic telecom products given our current focus on R&D,” stated Mahendra Nahata, MD of HFCL.
Under the PLI scheme for telecom and networking products, all participating businesses have pledged investments totaling Rs 4,115 crore to date.
The PLI scheme for telecom and networking products was announced by the DoT on February 24, 2021. It will cost Rs 12,195 crore over five years.
The incentive amount will be distributed over five years, from FY 2022-23 to FY 2026-27, allowing HFCL to increase its global competitiveness by including products that increase margins.By providing an additional incentive of one percent in addition to the existing incentives for products that are designed and manufactured in India, the Union Budget for the years 2022 and 2024 gave the PLI scheme for the development of a robust 5G ecosystem in India even more momentum.
Nahata stated, “We aim to make India a global manufacturing hub for telecom and networking products and believe that this initiative will enable our nation to expand the production and development of indigenous latest technology products.”
The development of 5G Outdoor Small Cell and Fixed Wireline Access products will be the subject of a technical collaboration between HFCL and Qualcomm, which was recently made public.
For a more rapid and cost-effective rollout of 5G services, telecom operators are utilizing cloud native multi-vendor networks.In order to realize diverse 5G use cases for Consumer, Enterprise, and Industry Verticals, it is also necessary to support multiple frequency bands (sub-6 GHz, millimeter wave) and various deployment scenarios.
The automated test environment that HFCL’s 5G Lab-as-a-Service provides enables the private sector, academia, and government to collaborate on product innovation from concept to reality, meeting the requirements of manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, and retail industries.
According to HFCL, the 5G Lab will assist in the development of pre-integrated and pre-validated 5G solutions for Low Mobility Large Cell, which are required for the effective implementation of rural mobile broadband in the nation.
In the initial phase, Indian telecom providers Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio are bringing 5G services to a few cities.According to Mahendra Nahata, HFCL’s managing director, “HFCL’s 5G Lab will enable technology providers like telecom operators, network equipment providers, system integrators, and IoT device manufacturers to analyze, integrate, and validate performance and capabilities of their products and solutions in a real 5G network environment.”
A multi-vendor 5G network and industry-leading test tools like an O-RAN studio, PTP conformance test equipment, signal analyzer and signal generator for RF conformance tests, and anechoic chamber are housed in HFCL’s laboratory.For automated lab validation, field deployment, and service automation, HFCL has developed a test platform that is agile and based on DevOps.
For testing in 5G environments, HFCL will provide access to highly skilled teams with expertise in DevOps, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, Kubernetes, and cloud native technologies.
