MediaTek bullish on 4G LTE rollout in India

NEW DELHI: Taiwanese chipset maker MediaTek is in talks with telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and handset makers Lava, Karbonn to cash in on the Indian 4G LTE market.

“We have a big focus, driving our LTE roadmap in India. We are trying to make sure we have most flexible devices and trying to cover all unique requirements for India LTE market. India is rolling out TDD and FDD into different frequency bands so we are making sure all of that is enabled in our chipsets,” Finbarr Moynihan, GM - Corporate Sales International, MediaTek, told Voice&Data.

At the moment, a lot of testing is going on and the company is in constant dialogue with telcos such as Reliance Jio, Airtel to understand their plans for different spectrum, different features.

“We want to make sure our chipsets support all the features of the telcos. Everyone’s network is different and we have to test all of that. Once that is done we will be pretty confident that our chipsets will work on any telcos’ network,” Moynihan said.

As far as devices are concerned, the company is making sure that it has chipsets for high-end as well as affordable devices and it builds and supports all frequency bands, the operator requirements, whatever is important for LTE rollout in India.

“Although there is very limited LTE networks, consumers’ awareness towards LTE is going up and this year, we will see more LTE capable devices coming into the market. I think in the next couple of months we will see more 4G LTE devices based on MediaTek chipsets.”

MediaTek has worked with many Indian brands, it worked with them for 2G feature phones, smartphones, tablets and now also starting to work on 4G LTE.

The company has created the world’s first True 8Core smartphone platform with LTE and CorePilot technology, which it claims releases the full power of multi-core mobile processors.

It is also planning to increase its headcounts in its R&D centers in Noida and Bangalore. Presently, the total headcount in both the sites stands at 400. It has plans to scale up the headcount to 500 from current 200 in Bangalore in the next few years.

“India is the second most important market for MediaTek after China in terms of quantity and scale and as the transition happens to 4G LTE. We see the overall market to grow and we can see a lot of opportunities for us as well,” he added.

Modernizing their network to LTE is now the top business priority for all cellular operators around the globe. Around 360 commercial LTE networks now operate in 124 countries worldwide, 96 new LTE networks were launched in 2014 and this number is expected to reach beyond 450 by the end of 2015.

According to a recent report, LTE connections across the world are predicted to pass one billion by 2017. Sixty five percent of the world population is expected to be covered by LTE by the end of 2019.

The Asian market will account for over 47% of all 4G connections - driven mainly by India and China.