The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has excluded Huaweiand ZTE from its list of companies asked to partner it for trials to develop 5G use cases for India, indicating that New Delhi may well follow the US and Australia in limiting involvement of Chinese telecom equipment makers in the roll-out of the next-gen technology.
“This appears more a move to restrict government ties with Chinese equipment makers given the sensitive nature of security issues, especially after what happened in some other countries,” said an industry executive.
In India, Huawei has already been facing huge pressure on revenue owing to rapid consolidation in the telecom market, which has slashed the number of telcos by more than half. The company, staring at a 40% slump in revenue in 2018, has already stopped assembly of its products out of its local plants and has resorted to import to meet the reduced demand. Huawei’s India revenue is likely to come down to roughly $700-800 million (Rs 4,740-5,415 crore) this year from around $1.2 billion in 2017.
“We are going to set up core group in the department to push this (trials) further, so that by early next year, we would be able to demonstrate 5G use cases in India,” Telecom Secretory Mrs Sundararajan said.
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