Why is there no Indian telecommunication equipment vendor?

The answer depends on the kind of telecommunication equipment you are talking about. For simplicity let's divide them into active and passive components.

Equipment that implements the physical layer of the network is "passive" and there are plenty of manufacturers in India making products like fiber optic cables, Ethernet cables, antennas ,enclosures,interconnects etc.

Then there are "active" components in the networking gear that make it "intelligent". These are the electronic chips and the software that program those chips.

In terms of software India's capability in the telecommunication industry is good.

But when it comes to underlying electronics we are way behind. While India has the ability to design chips, advanced electronic manufacturing is non-existent and we have to import most of the key components.

[By the way, the gear from companies that power the G networks is just a desktop computer encased in a weatherproof box. So it's not hard to replicate at least on the assembly level. And many companies are doing that, importing chips and then doing the final assembly and software locally.]

Of course the ideal scenario would be to set up manufacturing industries locally which will work well in the short term (10-20 years) and that is good enough for one generation.

Things however are rapidly changing. A new and upcoming field of technology which was mostly a research project up until a few years back is now shaping up to succeed electronics. This branch is called photonics [1]

My personal opinion is that more effort and time should be spent on studying this field because right now it is in development. We can shape it and create an ecosystem around it, to fulfill our requirements and continue to remain independent of the global supply chain. The ship of electronic manufacturing has already set sail. There's no point chasing after it.

It is easy for me to say this but for policy makers the decision is not easy. It may take as long as a decade to see the fruits of the investment. And of course there's the risk that the results may not be as per expectations.

If you ask me it's a blessing in disguise that we don't have electronic manufacturing. This way we can look to the future and not waste energy on a dying industry.

If you are interested in this subject please check out this playlist by NPTEL https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyqSpQzTE6

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Comments

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Notes by Akshat Jiwan Sharma

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