Amit Marwah, head, E2E Sales Solutioning, Nokia India

India continues to be a high-growth market for Nokia. Over the past few years, the vendor has played a key role in establishing the country’s 4G ecosystem by facilitating service roll-outs and network upgradation by operators. Nokia foresees continued activity in the 4G space over the next few years as operators embark on large-scale implementation. The company is also geared up to lend support to ambitious government programmes such as Digital India, Smart Cities and Make in India. Amit Marwah, head, E2E Sales Solutioning, Nokia India, shares his views on the opportunities in the Indian telecom sector and the company’s growth strategy…

How has Nokia’s Indian business ev­o­lved over the years? What were the bu­siness highlights during the past one year?

India is one of the top 10 high-growth regions for Nokia. Its manufacturing operations, global delivery centres, and research and development (R&D) set-ups here reflect Nokia’s unwavering focus on the country and enhanced proxi­mity to its customers. From laun­ching and helping in the rapid growth of 2G/GSM technology in early 2000, to bringing in high quality 3G services in 2011, to pioneering 4G/long term evolution (LTE) technology, we have been at the forefront of partnering with telecom operators in the country. Today, Nokia has the top market share in GSM and WCDMA, managed services, packet core and GSM-Railways.

The key highlights are as follows:

  • About 288 million subscribers in India are served by Nokia’s equipment throu­gh 260,000 sites.
  • We have global delivery centres in Noida and Chennai managing over 200 million subscribers across 86 countries, and a service management capability centre in Noida.
  • We are India’s largest international telecom infrastructure manufacturer and the first to manufacture 3G and LTE (long term evolution) products locally.
  • We have a global R&D centre in Bengaluru.
  • We are India’s largest 4G equipment vendor with commercial LTE and VoLTE (voice over LTE) deployments.

How has the integration with Alcatel-Lucent’s business impacted the Indian operations? What are the focus areas of the merged entity?

In January 2016, Nokia successfully completed the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent. Overall, the combined company offers an end-to-end portfolio of products and services across five business groups: mobile networks, fixed networks, IP/optical networks, applications and analytics. It has the scope and scale to be the global leader in broadband, IP networking, cloud technology and services. The acquisition process was smooth and closed sooner than expected. The combined operations started on January 14, 2016 and we have had a strong start. We are now one strong, combined entity and we go to market as one organisation. Fur­thermore, we continue to enjoy strong support from our customers, including those from the former Alcatel-Lucent. We are focused on capitalising on these opportunities by strengthening our sales execution as well as bringing unique innovation rapidly to the market like our recently announ­ced 5G-ready AirScale radio access family of products.

What are the key opportunities offered by the Indian 4G market? How are you helping operators in rolling out 4G services in India?

4G/LTE technology has immense potential for large-scale implementation and is considered a key growth vehicle across India. There have been two major developments related to 4G:

  • The device ecosystem in LTE has improved over the years and today there are many affordable 4G smartphones available in the market; and
  • The 1800 MHz band is available for FDD-LTE technology roll-out in India and many operators have procured a meaningful quantity of such spectrum.

We have been closely working with the industry to deploy 4G services. Nokia has been helping operators to migrate to 4G technologies. We announced a deal with Idea Cellular for deploying 4G technology. Nokia’s global experience in deploying 4G/LTE networks will enable operators to deliver an enhanced customer experience with superior network quality.

Do you see platform convergence gaining ground in the Indian market?

We believe that our innovative and powerful platforms will drive the convergence of fixed, mobile, cable and hybrid networks, and bring flexibility and benefits to telecom consumers.

What are the challenges in the Indian telecom market?

We would rather put it as challenges in the industry and yes, there are a few. Data is growing exponentially, networks are becoming more complex and heterogeneous, technology is moving fast towards cloud, customers are demanding more personalised services, and energy consumption by networks is growing. All this puts a lot of pressure on vendors like us to offer solutions that address these complexities and customer demands. The good thing is that we had already thought through all this some time back and designed end-to-end solutions for addressing such challenges in the future. Our expanded portfolio post the acquisition has put us in a significantly advantageous position to be able to overcome these challenges.

How is Nokia contributing to programmes like Make in India and Digital India?

Nokia is committed to the government’s vision of Make in India. Our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Chennai provides mobile communication infrastructure equipment for operators around the world including in India, the US and Europe. It is the largest manufacturing facility in the Indian telecom equipment manufacturing sector and a strategic hub for Nokia’s global operations. We have invested Rs 5 billion since 2008 in the 140,000 square metre facility that produces and distributes mobile broadband products for advanced technologies such as LTE in the domestic and global markets. The manufactured items include state-of-the-art Flexi Multiradio 10 base stations, system modules and filters, and transport network elements.

With the government’s strong focus on the Smart Cities and Digital India programmes, universal broadband connectivity across urban and rural areas will be one of the key building blocks. Wireless and wireline connectivity solutions along with the horizontal internet-of-things platform and smart applications will enable the delivery of e-services and e-governance to citizens. Nokia has a strong portfolio of products and services including a complete suite of broadband access solutions in FTTX, GPO, PON, IP/MPLS, switching, routing and optic networks to address the broadband needs of the BharatNet project and thereby directly contribute to the Digital India initiative.

What is your outlook for the Indian telecom market? What growth opportunities do you foresee in the coming years?

According to our MBiT study 2015, launched in March 2016, aggressive 3G network expansion in the existing circles and new launches by operators are driving data traffic in India. This is only likely to grow in the coming years, fuelled by the auction of additional spectrum, an increase in smartphone penetration and the development of the content ecosystem. More­over, the rapid evolution of the device ecosystem, supported by a decline in prices, presents significant growth opportunities for operators as they launch and expand 4G/LTE networks in the coming years. The key trends that we expect in the short term are:

  • 2G still has the potential to drive internet adoption in Category B and Category C circles in the short to medium term.
  • With evolving device support for 3G carrier aggregation, operators could potentially offer DC-HSPA as a substitute for 4G/LTE in some circles in the short term.
  • The 4G/LTE device ecosystem will continue to grow with a decline in device prices, thus giving operators the opportunity to monetise quickly as they launch 4G/LTE networks.

“Nokia has successfully completed the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent. The combined entity has the scope and scale to be the global leader in broadband, IP networking, cloud technology and services.”

What are your views on the upcoming spectrum auction?

We do think that this is an opportunity for telecom operators to expand their pan-Indian 2100 MHz (3G) footprint. How­ever, once spectrum harmonisation in the 1800 MHz band takes place, it will throw up different discussions. On the other hand, we believe that the 700 MHz band is a bit expensive, particularly when compared to other markets,

How do you see the roadmap for 5G services panning out in India?

Although 5G standards are planned to be completed for the first 5G commercial deployments in 2020, many operators in the US, Korea and Japan are eager to pilot/trial 5G in 2016 and commercially launch the first 5G solutions from 2017 onwards. Nokia is taking a leadership position here and working closely with major operators globally to prepare 5G for commercial reality. So far, we have performed more than 10 pilots along with global customers where we tested 5G equipment. A major focus is on the propagation of 5G radio waves in real environments to optimise the system for the best user experience in any kind of environment. Furthermore, Nokia is the first vendor to demonstrate live 5G use cases and run 5G radio access on a commercially available base station, Nokia AirScale, which was launched at the Mobile World Congress in February 2016. In India, Nokia Networks is part of the Telecommunications Standards Development Society that is working on 5G and is in discussion with telecom operators to understand the use cases relevant to India.