Ericsson in talks for coverage, capacity expansion

NEW DELHI: Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson has said it is driving talks with Indian telecom operators for 4G and 3G coverage along with capacity expansion in the country, which is in the midst of a data boom due to fast-paced smartphone adoption and price war among telcos. Nitin Bansal, head of products at Ericsson India, told ET that telcos are deploying more 4G sites than 3G sites. “Based on discussions, we see a big market in India. Growth fundamentals are strong. It will continue for the next five years,” he said. 4G LTE deployments are starting now and will take some time to achieve wider coverage, he said.

Bansal said the gear vendor is bringing products suited for the Indian environment, both financially and technologically, allowing telcos to flexibly transition from legacy technologies to newer technologies. “Our products will ensure lower capex and opex for telecom operators in India, and also ensure that all technologies coexist,” he said.

The executive said that Indian mobile phone operators are now actively looking at deploying indoor solutions such as small cells since most data consumption happens indoors.


Having commercially deployed small cells in Mumbai recently, Ericsson India is in talks with telcos and real estate developers for the deployment of these indoor solution in other metros. “We see this happening immediately,” said Bansal.

According to the company’s latest report, GSM remained the dominant technology in 2016, accounting for more than 70% of total mobile subscriptions. The gear vendor said that 3G is going to remain a dominant technology in India in terms of usage till 2022, with 740 million users.

By 2022, India is likely to have 520 million 4G subscriptions, 211million 2G, five million CDMA and three million 5G subscriptions. LTE and WCDMA/HSPA or 3G are together expected to represent 85% of all Indian subscriptions by 2022, as per the report.