Nokia says telcos building pan-India 5G capacity to drive its business growth

PTI, Aug 30, 2021, 2:55 PM IST

Telecom operators are developing pan-India 5G capacity which will continue to drive business for Nokia in the country, the head of the Finnish firm’s India unit has said.

Nokia Senior Vice President & Head of India Market Sanjay Malik told PTI that telecom companies are focusing on building capacity for 5G so that they are ready for launch once they get spectrum in the proposed auction, while their strategy on roll out of services circle or city-wise is still in works.

“We still see positive momentum in the market from both the capacity and the coverage build which is going to happen, the 5G readiness in terms of transport, the broadband. All these segments would still continue over the rest of the year and we see good potential and good momentum in all the areas,” Malik said.

Nokia’s sales in India grew 75 per cent on year-on-year basis to 230 million euros in the second quarter ended June 30, 2021 from 179 million euros.

Malik said the spectrum auction conducted by the government in March was the key driver from India perspective which fuelled company’s business in the country.

“Basically it is the 4G capacity and coverage which started and because of the spectrum auction that got a boost but operators have started building their transport and their backhaul for 5G readiness. Because of Covid, working from home environment, the fixed broadband also has been seeing a good growth in the market,” Malik said.

He said the company also recorded growth in cloud and network services portfolio.

Nokia, which primarily caters to telecom operators, has seen business traction from non-communication service provider business entities as well mainly for its cloud computing portfolio, Malik said.

He said that even for telecom operators enterprise will be a big segment for 5G services to whom most of the operators would like to approach with high data bandwidth capacity and low latency data services.

When asked about his insights on 5G launch plan of telecom operators in India, he said that telecom operators may go for staggered launch from metros to smaller circles based on economics after they get spectrum for services but their strategy is still in works.

Nokia has globally signed 175 commercial deals for 5G network of which 68 networks are live with 5G services.

5G services in India are expected to be launched next year after government’s proposed spectrum auction that will provide telecom operators desired frequencies for delivering high speed data services.

According to the Department of Telecom, 5G technology is expected to deliver ten times better download speed than that of 4G and up to three times greater spectrum efficiency.