Nokia to expand research and development centre in India, hire more locally

New Delhi: Telecom gear maker Nokia is planning to expand its research and development centre in India by hiring more people locally, a top company official said on Monday.

Nokia India Country Manager Tarun Chhabra said at a government event that the company has been committed for 30 years and is determined to play a very important role in skilling people locally and then hiring them.

"We are going to hire more people in our R&D centre. Other than R&D centre of about 8,000 people, we have around 4,000 people who are supporting all global service operations from India. It means there is a huge opportunity," he said at a BSNL event.

"When I talk to telecom operators around the world, they talk about cyber security as the most important thing now. I would say we are committed for 30 years, and we further commit that we are going to play a very important role in skilling the Indian people here, and then hiring them in our R&D centers in the future," Chhabra said.

The state-run telecom firm at the event signed an MoU with foreign telecom gear makers Nokia, Ericsson, Cisco, and Qualcomm for rolling out advanced training on 5G, artificial intelligence, machine learning, networking, and digital technologies at BSNL's apex training institute, Bharat Ratna Bhim Rao Ambedkar Institute of Telecom Training (BRBRAITT) in Jabalpur.

Union telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia called it an important step in line with the Prime Minister's vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat, local to global.

"Prime Minister's vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat, all of that has been encapsulated in an institution that has been named after Bharat Ratna Bimrao Ambedkarji's Telecom Centre of Excellence and Training based in Jabalpur. Qualcomm, Ericsson, Nokia and Cisco, the four most important equipment suppliers for the telecom revolution across the world, have now from today started training courses in BRBBAIT Centre in Jabalpur," Scindia said.

He said the agreement is just a seed that has been sown and expects to take it to a much higher level in the days to come.

"It is the beginning of a new journey where our human resource potential in India will be not only trained, but hopefully through this training will become part of the international value chain process and in the days to come, pioneer India to move from the services sector to the product sector in the telecom revolution," Scindia said.

As part of this initiative, Nokia will train 300 students annually in 5G radio, core networks, and AI/ML applications and Ericsson will provide hands-on 5G training as well as online learning modules under the Ericsson Educate Program to over 2,000 students annually.

"This collaboration is an investment in building a future-ready workforce to lead innovation in 5G, IoT, and advanced telecom technologies," Ericsson India Managing Director Nitin Bansal said.

Qualcomm Technologies has signed a pact to set up a Qualcomm Institute at BRBRAITT, focusing on advanced 5G and AI training for students, BSNL trainers, and government stakeholders.

Under the pact, Cisco will provide free access to online curriculum and digital tools, while BSNL will coordinate implementation across non-profit educational institutions nationwide -- promoting equitable access to digital learning. The collaboration seeks to create a digitally enabled, job-ready youth workforce.