THE TIMES OF INDIA

TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2003

Nortel to increase R&D outsourcing from India

PTI

NEW DELHI: Global telecom equipment vendor, Nortel Networks, which has so
far outsourced R&D worth Rs 1000 crore from India over the past five years,
is planning to increase its product research development work locally in the
core areas of switching and enterprise voice.

"We have so far outsourced R&D in core areas like switching, wireless,
enterprise voice, call centre applications and wireline, worth Rs 1000 crore
over the last five years and it is going to increase in the same areas",
Ravi Chauhan, vice president, India and SARRC, enterprise solutions, Nortel
Networks, said on the sidelines of a function to launch its latest products.

Even though the company does not have a R&D centre of its own in India, it
works with partners - Infosys, Sasken and TCS - where it carries out its
development work. Nortel provides its own engineers to the partners for the
R&D, he said.

"Our technology partners have delivered very good work. Though cost
competitiveness is one the factors, it is quality, availability of the
talent, compatibilty with partners which has been responsible for our strong
development base here", Chauhan said.

The company does some R&D outsourcing from China. But India is on a strong
position on R&D outsourcing for Nortel.

As part of its strong India focus, Nortel announced launch of ethernet LAN
switches for the Indian market for the service-centric networks to carry
voice, data and multimedia communications in a converged network.

The switches are BayStack 425, BayStack 5000, Passport 8300 and Passport
1600.

Copyright © 2003 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.