India eyes cap on imported telecoms equipment

India’s telecoms regulator proposed a series of measures to cap the amount of equipment made outside India used in its telecoms industry. The protective move is an attempt to boost domestic manufacturing and keep foreign suppliers out of the country’s lucrative telecoms sector.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said that by 2020 it wanted at least 50 per cent of all equipment – including mobile handsets, Internet data cards and chips – to be manufactured by Indian groups and at least 80 per cent produced domestically. The move, intended to turn India into an equipment manufacturing hub, could have serious repercussions for global hardware makers such as Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei. India is the world’s second-biggest mobile market, after China, with 826m mobile subscribers as of February this year, and is adding about 20 million subscribers every month. The market is dominated by global companies, which supply more than 85 per cent of the equipment used by Indian operators and consumers. Among the 10 biggest hardware makers only one is Indian, according to analysts.