Ericsson aims to make India a manufacturing hub

Ericsson would rather win in India by beating competition on the merits of its product portfolio and competitive costs than if any of its rivals is barred, president and CEO Börje Ekholm said. Speaking to ET’s Danish Khan, Ekholm said the Swedish telecom equipment maker plans to make India a global manufacturing hub by getting more of its ecosystem players to set up shop in the country. Edited excerpts: How important is India to Ericsson?We need to recognise that India is a very large telecommunication market, probably the second largest in the world. So for us, it’s a key market to be part of… But there is a need here to continue to grow capacity in 4G, based on growing and continuing data demand. What is important for us is that it actually helps us also drive future road maps, for example, on how to make the solutions more cost competitive. So for us, we are committed and will continue to invest.Do you think that India has delayed the 5G roll out?If you look globally, India is not behind. I think it's all about how the spectrum is freed up and needs to be available. The Indian market actually needs 5G for the simple reason of accommodating the data traffic, and also to create new revenue streams. Should India also look at releasing spectrum in other bands like millimetre wave?Having all that spectrum is important. So you get the low band for coverage, you get in a way, mid band for capacity, and you get your millimetre wave for ultra-high performance requirements. India can actually have a portfolio of spectrum, then we can carrier aggregate across to get the best user experience in terms of coverage and performance.In India, spectrum pricing has emerged as one of the challenges for bands like 700 MHz, 5G band...It's a bit of a conundrum… we know that increased penetration of mobile broadband actually drives economic growth. And at the same time, many governments actually try to extract a lot of value on the spectrum. The problem is, that the operators that are supposed to build out the infrastructure, do not make a return on the investment. Does the production-linked incentive scheme for telecom gear interest Ericsson?Pune caters to the Indian demand for equipment. But we also are looking at developing the ecosystem, the sub-supplier ecosystem in India, so we can source more and more of the ingoing components locally. This will take some time since to qualify new vendors into our supply chain takes a bit of time. Our ambition is to therefore grow India as a manufacturing point for our global demand and Asia demand.India’s new ‘trusted sources’ for network equipment rule will come into effect soon...We have been an advocate for a long time to have a trusted stack. The whole stack, which includes equipment, software, operating parameters of the network, protection and quality at your network facilities, etc.That's important. For 5G, security has to be front and centre.Ericsson could benefit if some of your rivals are not able to qualify…Governments run the government policies. If you win because of other factors—your competitors are restricted in supply and you don't provide the best solutions—then it's only a temporary win. So, I much rather see that we win on our merits of having a strong product portfolio, competitive cost positions, and then we would win no matter what policy governments implement.

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