The Hindu Business Line : Alcatel-C-DoT research venture takes off — ITI's Rae Bareilly unit to reopen in two months

THE $14.7-billion French telecom major Alcatel's involvement would help ITI revive in two months its Rae Bareilly factory that had been dormant for some time now.

Announcing this at the inauguration of the Alcatel-C-DoT joint venture telecom research outfit, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, Union Communications and IT Minister, said, "Since the demand for landline exchanges has been reducing with the advent of mobile telephony, the Rae Bareilly plant had stopped rolling out equipment for land lines. Work would now begin on GSM-related equipment." The arrangement with ITI Ltd is the first of four initiatives that Alcatel is now taking in the Indian market. It has farmed out the manufacture of switching and base station equipment to ITI.

Alcatel's 51:49 joint venture with C-DoT (Centre for Development of Telematics) is the second such initiative. The outfit, to be located in Chennai, would develop technology for customer premise equipment (such as modems and mobile phones) on the Wimax technology (Wireless interoperability for microwave access is a certification for products specialising in broadband wireless access). The cost-effective products would be targeted at the rural market.According to Mr Serge Tchuruk, Chairman and CEO of Alcatel, "The research arm would only sell its intellectual property on a royalty basis to any telecom service provider and would not manufacture or sell equipment."

The centre would have 300 people initially and would require an investment of about Rs 212 crore. Alcatel is one of the companies that contribute to standards for Wimax.

Alcatel is set to work on ADSL (asymmetric digital line subscriber, that allows broadband access) and multimedia switches in two other ventures in India, soon. Mr Tchuruk said that Alcatel was also working on IPTV (TV over Internet Protocol) and that it had developed a "lot of technology" on that front.

Mr Maran added that BSNL was also tying up with Alcatel to obtain newer features, such as ringtones and memory for phones, for its landline services.

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