Hyundai And Wipro To Set Up Telecom Testing Centres In India

As government has finalized the plans to make the local testing of telecom equipment mandatory by the end of this financial year, Hyundai Motor India and Wipro Limited have started communicating with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to set up testing centres in India.

“New test labs are being set up. Hyundai’s representatives have come to us and the company wants to establish a telecom lab in India,” said Shakeel Ahmad, senior deputy director general, Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC).

Ahmad also stated,”Hyundai’s representatives discussed the feasibility and scope of telecom-centric testing in India with the officials of the government’s telecom engineering division. The Seoul headquartered company already operates a testing centre for motor vehicles in India, and wants to expand into telecommunications. Wipro is also interested in setting up a security lab for telecom sector.”

As per the new rules, Narendra Modi led government has made it mandatory for all the multinational gear vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei to get their equipments tested and certified locally from March 31, 2019.

Currently, India has 20 designated test laboratories for conducting checks for the safety requirement of telecom equipment. These labs are situated in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Sahibabad.

Telecom players have been opposing this move of making local testing mandatory as according to them, it would cost them an estimation Rs 1,500 crore annually assessment charges, and may delay network deployment and expansion.

However, TEC has added two rules to the pricing structure, one is application for evaluation and another is a standard test tariff. This rule would not be applicable for private designated labs and they would charge as per their tariff and government would not control it. – electronicsb2b