Minister to meet telecom gear manufacturers on Dec 4

As the 5G rollout gets a fresh momentum with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio launching the network in different areas every week, Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has called for a meeting with the chiefs of various local telecom equipment manufacturers on December 3 to discuss further enhancement of their capacities.

Sources told businessline that some of the companies whose CEOs have been invited include Dixon Technologies, Tejas Networks, Shyam Teleco, HFCl, ITI, Nokia and Samsung.

“The government is expected to discuss the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme that was given, and also some custom duty reliefs to domestic manufacturers,” said a source.

Nokia, Samsung and HFCL supply telecom equipment to telecom service providers such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. They have been also given approval by the government for incentives under the PLI scheme.

For instance, earlier this month, HFCL announced that it has received an approval to avail incentive of up to ₹652.79 crore .

HFCL has committed an investment of around ₹425 crore towards development and manufacture of various eligible products under the PLI scheme. There has been a commitment of ₹4,115 crore of investments from all participating companies under the PLI scheme.

Due to the faster availability of equipment, TSPs have been also been able to launch 5G services in a rapid pace. For instance, Airtel, on Monday, announced the launch of its 5G services in Patna. Apart from Patna, the company has launched its 5G Plus services in 13 other locations, including Bengaluru, Guwahati, Pune and Varansi.

Similarly, Reliance Jio has covered 46 cities/ towns including Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Kolkata, Chennai, Gujarat, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune. The Hindu Business Line