Nokia Chennai factory first to manufacture 5G radio equipment in India

Premier mobile phone technology solutions provider Nokia has made an announced at the ongoing India Mobile Congress 2018 that its manufacturing unit in Chennai has started manufacturing 5G New Radio (NR) based on the 3GPP 5G New Radio Release 15 standard.

According to Nokia, the Chennai plant is one of the largest telecom equipment manufacturing plant in the country, recently reaching the 4 million unit annual production milestone of 2G, 3G and 4G units. It serves both domestic as well as global customers, shipping to over 100 countries.

Nokia’s Chennai factory produces a range of telecom equipment across technologies and now will include 5G gear in its shipments as network deployments start. As part of an on-going program, known as the ‘Conscious factory’, the Nokia Chennai plant recently implemented the first 'real-world' Smart Manufacturing application of Industry 4.0 in India leveraging solutions such as Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), connected Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, and Internet of Things to enhance operations and increase productivity.

The plant is equipped with cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, such as the surface mounting technology, with a capacity of 12.8 billion components every year, 3D automated optical inspection and X-Ray inspection capability.

Data use has grown tremendously over the last several years. In India alone, the average consumption was 7.4 GB of data per user per month on mobile devices over mobile networks, placing India ahead of developed markets like the UK, South Korea, and France. This is set to increase significantly in the 5G era with billions of connected devices. 5G NR will support such data consumption by providing significantly more network capacity, higher user throughput and lower latency with increased network reliability.

Sanjay Malik, senior vice president and head of the India Market, at Nokia, said, “This is another big leap towards the ‘Make in India’ vision as our factory continues to contribute to the Indian economy and the country’s growing profile as a manufacturing and engineering hub. Nokia was the first to leverage the skills and capabilities in India and start manufacturing telecom networks equipment in the country in 2008, and develop the local supply chain for various components. We are now pioneering 5G manufacturing in the country, making India and the world ready for 5G.”