INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - AUGUST 2006
THE MONTH THAT WAS...

NORTEL TO SET UP R&D CENTRE IN BANGALORE

GLOBAL telecom major Nortel has established its R&D centre in Bangalore . The centre — called Nortel Technology Excellence (NTEC) — will focus on product design, development and testing.

The centre was part of the acquisition by Nortel when it bought out US-headquartered Tasman Networks for $99.5 million (Rs 448 crore) in February this year. Tasman had a centre in Bangalore with 70 engineers.NTEC is looking at having more than 100 engineers by the end of 2006 at its 35,000 square foot facility.

Addressing mediapersons here on Tuesday, Nortel India MD Ravi Chauhan said NTEC will initially concentrate on router products and later expand its capability to other spheres such as ethernet switching, security and VoIP.

NTEC is the 13th R&D centre for Nortel globally and the second in Asia after Beijing in China . It is expected to collaborate with the customer base of Nortel in the region. Nortel invests around $2 billion in R&D every year and one-third of its workforce is dedicated to this activity. Bangalore is the home for the telecom products majors especially with Nortel's competitors already setting up R&D bases like Cisco and Juniper networks.

Nortel entered in the Indian market in 1991 and has offices in six locations. Though, it does not have its own development centre, it has very long term engagements with the Indian software powerhouses like Infosys, Wipro and TCS. It has also invested $10 million (Rs 45 crore) in Sasken Technologies to focus on its various technologies.

Chauhan said the company currently has a customer base of 400 spread across both the enterprise and carrier networks.