China’s Huawei said India does not have any “negative attitude” towards the embattled networks gear maker which can contribute towards the country’s efforts to boost local manufacturing through the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme.
“Until now, they (Indian government) have no negative attitude or decision to block Huawei for 5G,” Jay Chen, Huawei’s Asia Pacific vice president, said during a virtual session of Mobile World Congress 2021.
The executive, who was earlier the company’s India head, said Huawei can contribute and add value to India’s Rs 12,000 crore PLI scheme recently announced by the government.
“Huawei shares the same opinion with the Narendra Modi-led government that local manufacturing is the right strategy for growth of India’s telecom sector, and believes it can contribute immensely to this growth as it’s also our responsibility, given Huawei’s long-term partnership and strategy in India,” said Chen.
Under the cabinet-approved PLI scheme for telecom and network products, the government will give Rs 12,195 crore worth of sops over the next five years, with an aim to boost local production of networks and reduce dependence on imports.
Huawei’s comments, though, shortly ahead of India’s plans to unveil a list of “trusted sources” for acquiring network gear and also amending licences of telecom operators, moves seen as the first official steps to keep Chinese network vendors Huawei and ZTE out of India’s future telecom expansion contracts as well as its 5G technology rollouts.
Since the outbreak of Sino-Indian border tensions last June, the government has unofficially nudged private and state-run telcos to avoid Chinese gear.
Chen, however, expressed optimism and reaffirmed Huawei’s commitment to India. “There was some uncertainty in calendar 2020 in the India market about Chinese investments, but Huawei never had any plans to leave India as it never changed its India strategy,” he said.
He said “no matter what happens, cooperation between Huawei and the Indian telecom industry would only grow”. He added that the company is working with partners and engaging with the government, and it is confident that the government “would take the right decision for India”.
Chen also said he was hopeful that 5G network trials, though delayed, would start soon, and that Huawei had evinced its keenness to the Indian government to participate in these trials three years ago.
The government has yet to hold trials for local 5G use cases and provide any clarity on the timing of India’s maiden sale of spectrum supporting the next-generation fast broadband technology.
Apart from Huawei and ZTE, other global vendors supplying networks to Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are Finland’s Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson while South Korea’s Samsung is the only supplier to Reliance Jio Infocomm.
