With Jio’s winds in its sails, HFCL charts course for Telecom 2.0

If telecom 1.0 was about operators, 2.0 is about integrators. If Tatas have emerged as one, decades-old telecoms veteran HFCL cannot be far behind. A close partner and investee of the Reliance group, HFCL is flexing its yet-to-form product muscles as the winds of change gather speed

Even as TCS-Tata-Tejas combine is gearing up to rollout BSNL’s 4G network, attention is shifting to 5G. Will locally developed 5G equipment be given preference?

HFCL, a telecom project integrator that has rolled out Jio’s OFC network, is prepping to enter the fray with 6 products, starting with a macro radio

Always a storied company, HFCL’s stock price is volatile once again, 20 years after its famous stratospheric rise and debilitating crash

Stakeholders say if the current political environment prevails, India could birth a Huawei or ZTE in the next 4-5 years. But for now, it’s integrators like HFCL that stand to gain

For years, HFCL was content to simply focus on manufacturing and rolling out optic fibre cables. Today, however, the 35-year-old company is girding up to test the dominance of global telecoms vendors in India. A little bit of Cisco, a teeny bit of Nokia, a touch of Arista, Mist, and their ilk is what HFCL is adding to its arsenal as India turns the heat on localisation in telecom networks.

A group of Tata companies group of Tata companies The Ken PMO stakes BSNL’s future on Tata and an aatmanirbhar 4G gamble Read more in association with the government-run telematics development centre C-DoT is in the final stages of deploying a locally developed 4G network for BSNL, the public sector telco. Commenting on this, Ashwini Vaishnav, the union minister for communications and railways, said said Economic Times In final commercial talks with TCS for BSNL 4G network rollout: Telecom Minister Read more , “We have to take a technological leap and have to take a risk.”

Taking their cue from the minister, businesses, both large and small, are leaping all around.

One of the largest telecom project service providers for Reliance Jio, HFCL HFCL HFCL It was earlier called Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited has rolled out the telco’s 4G optic fibre cable (OFC) network, but it is now looking to enter the 5G network equipment space as well. And the transition from OFC to network gear is, well, a massive leap.

“Jio is a good paymaster [in turnkey projects]. But as a company we’ve decided to increase [our revenue from] products more than from turnkey projects,” Mahendra Nahata, HFCL’s managing director, said on an analyst call on 29 April. Nahata knows Jio more intimately than simply as a paymaster. His company, Infotel Broadband, which was the sole recipient of a controversial pan-India controversial pan-India Economic Times Reliance Industries buys 95% stake in Infotel Broadband for Rs 4,800 cr Read more broadband wireless access (BWA) licence in 2010, was bought over by Reliance Industries and rechristened as Reliance Jio Infocomm.

Nahata got a board seat at Reliance Industries. Later, Reliance Ventures also invested in HFCL. In December 2021, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries upped its stake in HFCL to 5% through another subsidiary, Reliance Strategic Business Ventures.

HFCL has never been far from drama drama MoneyLife HFCL Scrip Drama: Raises Intriguing Questions Read more .

AUTHOR

Seema Singh

Seema has over two decades of experience in journalism. Before starting The Ken, Seema wrote “Myth Breaker: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and the Story of Indian Biotech”, published by HarperCollins in May 2016. Prior to that, she was a senior editor and bureau chief for Bangalore with Forbes India, and before that she wrote for Mint. Seema has written for numerous international publications like IEEE-Spectrum, New Scientist, Cell and Newsweek. Seema is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MacArthur Foundation Research Grantee.

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AUTHOR

Pratap Vikram Singh

Pratap is based out of Delhi and covers policy and myriad intersections with the other sectors, most notably technology. He has worked with Governance Now for seven years, reporting on technology, telecom policy, and the social sector.

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