Bengaluru-based QuadGen Wireless Solutions, which provides network and engineering services, has entered into a partnership with Vietnam’s state-owned telecom major Viettel High Tech to manufacture 5G network equipment.The products will include radio access, optical transmission and core network equipment, particularly targeted for the sub-urban and rural markets where the low average per-user revenue makes it cost intensive for telecom operators to deploy 5G network equipment. The partnership also includes the participation of Silicon Valley-based Ai20X.While QuadGen brings in its network engineering and software expertise and Viettel brings in design, R&D, and manufacturing knowledge, Ai20X creates an ecosystem to bring in other companies with differentiating products, the company said.
QuadGen eventually plans to move manufacturing of these telecom equipment to India, to benefit from the production-linked incentive scheme that has boosted domestic manufacturing of electronics in the past few years. Currently, global majors such as Ericsson and Nokia supply the bulk of the telecom equipment used by Indian operators such as Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.QuadGen said it is in talks with private players, as well as state-owned BSNL, and hopes to capture a share of the telecom infrastructure market. Talking about the partnership, co-founder and head of India operations, C S Rao, noted that there is significant room for growth in 5G infra deployment. Rao has previously served as the India head for US-based telecom firm Lucent and chipmaker Intel.“The infrastructure products come with a parameter called capex per subscriber. Typically, it varies between $25-$30 per subscriber. Today, we have around 80 million 5G subscribers and there is a potential to reach 500 million by 2027, as projected by the government, so with another 6-7x growth in subscribers, the addressable market can be as high as $25 billion,” he said in an interaction with Fe.India’s top two telecom operators RJio and Bharti Airtel are aggressively focusing on expanding its rural network, where RJio leads in most regions in terms of the number of subscribers, while Bharti Airtel is slowing catching up to the market share.RJio and Bharti Airtel have targets to complete the pan-India deployment of their 5G network by this month and March, respectively. However, 5G adoption in India has been slower than expected due to lack of any consumer-focused use-cases. Meanwhile, operators have faced heavy cost of deployment amid a sluggish revenue growth in this financial year due to fewer subscriber addition.