Finnish telecom giant Nokia has said it plans to start manufacturing 5G equipment in India. The company's Chennai manufacturing plant has begun making New Radio (the air interface circuit between mobile devices and active base stations).
Nokia says it's manufacturing NR based on the new 3GPP 5G New Radio Release 15 standard. The Chennai plant may also begin churning out IP and Optics product lines in India, something the company's head of marketing said they're evaluating. In fact, if Nokia sees enough demand from telecom operators in India, they may even begin developing fixed network products
Also Read:?Here's How 5G Will Connect Our Phones, PCs, & Smart Cars With 1 Gbps Network Speeds By 2019
Right now, the Chennai plant is one of the largest telecom equipment manufactories in India, recently managing to hit a 4 million unit annual production goal for 2G, 3G and 4G units. Not just for India, the plant also serves global customers in 100 countries.
This is big news for India, especially with the situation mobile internet is in right now. Thanks to the telco pricing war Reliance Jio initiated two years ago, data usage is on the rise across the country. Just last the year, the average monthly data consumption per subscriber was 7.4 GB, much higher than even developed markets like UK, South Korea and France.
With the arrival of 5G and it's improved speed, bandwidth, and latency, that number is only expected to go up. Smartphone companies are already starting to release 5G-capable devices in India, in anticipation of the new standard being adopted soon.