Zarlink offers next gen chips to telcos

Our Bureau

BANGALORE, Dec. 18

ZARLINK Semiconductor (formerly Mitel Corporation), a Canadian company which delivers communications connectivity solutions, has announced the launch of the next generation chips for the Indian telecom market.

The company is working with major Indian companies such as C-DoT, Wipro, Measurements and Controls, Midas, RTTS, Shyam Telecom, Tejas Networks and Banyan Networks.

Zarlink, which spends around 19 per cent on R&D, plans to look at outsourcing some of the design work to India, according to Mr Sunny Arora, Vice-President and General Manager, Asia Pacific. The economic recession had not seen any drop in R&D investments, he said. The Indian market was one of the potentially large markets, said Mr Arora said. Zarlink supplies voice/data switching chips and chips for implantable and wearable solutions such as pace makers, hearing aids and other medical devices.

Other high points of the company include high capacity processing chips for VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) solutions, a breakthrough DMT (discrete multi-tone) chip for VDSL (very high speed digital subscriber line) modems, and a high performance timing in chip that synchronises SONET/SDH (synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy) networking equipment.

For financial year 2001, the companys revenues stood at C $674 million. The company has 3,000 customers across 100 countries including Nortel, Lucent, Cisco, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Alcatel, Siemens and Fujitsu.