The government may possibly incentivize global telecom manufacturers to assemble all their equipment using only local content. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is ready for a meeting with the vendors on June 3. In addition, the meeting is to pursue their ideas and discuss tactics to increase manufacturing in India, as reported by Financial Express.
Further, the government plans to provide incentives to companies such as Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and Huawei to make their equipment with local content by 100 percent. Currently, companies such as Nokia and Ericsson are manufacturing equipment in India. However, their local content addition is only around 40 percent, the report said.
The government wishes to become self-reliant in the development of Telecom equipment. Moreover, this is owing to the issues of security, Financial Express stated in its report.
“If all the equipment is manufactured here with 100% local content, the probability of control and snooping by foreign countries can be minimized,” said a source to the publication.
Earlier on May 12, the Digital Communications Commission (DCC), the decision-making body of DoT, sanctioned a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme. Further, this was to boost equipment manufacturing across the country.
As per the report, the telecom vendors are of opinion that 100 percent production of local equipment is possible. However, all operators should follow the same rules and manufacture equipment using local content.