QuadGen Wireless Solutions, based in Bengaluru, has formed a cooperation with Viettel High Tech, the state-owned telecom company in Vietnam, to develop 5G network equipment.

The devices will include radio access, optical transmission, and core network equipment, and will be aimed specifically at suburban and rural regions where telecom operators face high costs in deploying 5G network equipment due to low average per-user income. Ai20X, situated in Silicon Valley, has also joined the collaboration.

While QuadGen contributes network engineering and software skills and Viettel brings design, R&D, and manufacturing knowledge, Ai20X, according to the business, builds an ecosystem to bring in additional companies with differentiating goods.

QuadGen eventually intends to relocate manufacturing of these telecom equipment to India in order to take advantage of the production-linked incentive scheme that has bolstered domestic electronics manufacturing in recent years. Global giants such as Ericsson and Nokia currently supply the majority of telecom equipment used by Indian operators such as Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.

QuadGen stated that it is in discussions with private businesses as well as the state-owned BSNL in order to gain a portion of the telecom infrastructure industry. C S Rao, co-founder and head of India operations, observed that there is substantial space for expansion in 5G infrastructure rollout. Rao formerly worked as the India director for the US-based telecom firm Lucent and the chipmaker Intel.

"The infrastructure goods include a parameter known as capex per subscriber. It usually ranges between $25 and $30 per subscriber. Today, we have over 80 million 5G customers, with a potential to reach 500 million by 2027, as forecasted by the government, so with another 6-7x growth in subscribers, the addressable market may be as high as $25 billion," he told Fe.

RJio and Bharti Airtel, India's top two telecom carriers, are rapidly building their rural network, where RJio leads in most regions in terms of subscriber count, while Bharti Airtel is slowly catching up to the market share.

RJio and Bharti Airtel want to complete their pan-India 5G network deployments this month and March, respectively. However, due to a dearth of consumer-focused use-cases, 5G adoption in India has been slower than planned. Meanwhile, operators have experienced high rollout costs, as well as sluggish revenue growth this fiscal year due to fewer customer additions.