Alcatel ramps up India plan

French equipment vendor Alcatel is planning to venture into railways, aviation and defence as part of its strategy for the Indian communications market.

While Alcatel commands a 13 per cent market share globally, the company, despite operating in India for over two decades, is yet to find a place amongst equipment majors here.

"Our multi-pronged strategy for India will seek to address the technological and hardware requirements of a host of sectors," said Ravi Sharma, managing director and president, South Asia, Alcatel, in an interview to Business Standard.

Alcatel had recently bagged contracts to set up a transmission backbone for Railtel (a subsidiary of Indian railways), and a telecom backbone for the Delhi Metro.

"We are in the running for a Euro 100 million contract for signaling systems.

This deal apart, the market for signalling equipment and fibre link networks for the railways is over Rs 500 crore annually," he said.

According to Sharma, Alcatel will also bid to set up and upgrade the telecom infrastructure of domestic and international airports in India. Sharma said Alcatel had recently won a microwave communication and key contracts with the defence ministry. Alcatel also supplies electronic private branch exchange (EPABX) systems to armed forces.

On the telecom front, Alcatel bagged its first major contract last year with its 65 million Euro bid for 3 million GSM lines for BSNL. In April 2005, Alcatel, in yet another significant step, joined hands with the country's telecom research and development institution (C-DOT) to develop broadband access technologies for the rural market.

"We are totally committed to research and development of Wi-Max technologies in India. An eight-member committee is working on the legal structure, market potential, financing mix and sharing of R&D for this joint venture. The committee will finalise a road map within 8 weeks and the JV will be operational by the third quarter," he said.

Alcatel has also tied up with ITI's Rae Bareli plants for domestic manufacture of base stations. "Local manufacture and transfer of technology will give us the edge to address hardware requirements and service obligations of cellular operators," he added.