Amid Data Price War Among Telcos, Ericsson Sees Growth In India

Mumbai: Despite ongoing troubles faced by telcos on account of competitive pressures, Swedish major Ericsson today said the high demand for data will force operators to keep on investing in network.

"We expect the mobile broadband traffic to grow multifold. The networks have to be geared up to cater to that traffic with as little opex as possible," its head of network products in the country, Nitin Bansal, told reporters here.

Asked if it has seen any dent to the pricing power while negotiating deals with the telcos, he said the company sees continued investments and operators continue to be interested in modernising and increasing capacities.

It can be noted that three top incumbent telcos -- Airtel, Vodafone and Idea -- have shown huge impact on their financials in face of aggressive posturing of the new entrant Reliance Jio last year.

Bansal acknowledged the company has benefited from the massive roll out of fourth generation networks by all the operators in the last two years, but declined to quantify the benefit.

India contributed 5 per cent of the Swedish firm's global revenues with a topline of SEK 10.748 billion in FY16.

Asked if the impending merger between Idea Cellular and Vodafone will have any impact on its operations, Bansal said it may also benefit the company as the two telcos seek to consolidate their network to serve customers seamlessly.

Bansal said the company sees the number of smartphones going up to 810 million by 2021, which will be 58 per cent of the user base. It also sees a 15x jump in the data traffic at 4.5 Exabytes by that year.

The networking and telecom equipment and services company today launched two products in the country which reduce space taken and install times and increase power efficiency by up to 20 per cent.

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