NEW DELHI - Global wireless solutions group, Radio Frequency Systems (RFS), today announced the opening of a new manufacturing plant in Kolkata, for its market-leading microwave antenna systems.

The first phase of a major investment by RFS in the country, this state-of-the-art manufacturing plant will enable RFS to meet the burgeoning requirement across India and later the APAC region for microwave connectivity in mobile backhaul and transmission backbone applications.

The RFS manufacturing plant will enable the company to be more responsive to existing clients, compete aggressively in all aspects of India’s wireless sector and reach out to new customers across the APAC region - where the microwave radio market is forecast to reach 2.4 billion dollars by 2013, up from 1.9 billion dollars according to market analysts, Sky Light Research.

“In India, a new cellular base station site goes on air every four minutes. This is generating a huge need for the timely and cost-effective delivery of high-quality and leading-edge microwave radio systems to connect new BTS to cellular networks,” said Kuldeep Tikoo, Managing Director for India at RFS.

“By ramping up our production capacity in India, we will be able to lower the cost of logistics and reduce import duties, while cutting delivery lead times by more than 50 per cent. We anticipate further cost benefits to be realised by our solution partners and customers once the initial commissioning phase is completed in 2009,” Kuldeep added.

With around 350 million subscribers, the cellular market in India is the second largest in the APAC region (the first being China). However, with a mobile penetration rate of just 29 per cent, India is the focus of heavy network rollouts as the Government strives to increase basic teledensity and achieve its target of connecting 500 million mobile subscribers by 2010.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), more than 100,000 base transceiver station (BTS) sites are being deployed annually, while the imminent award of 3G licences will certainly prompt a fresh wave of telecoms investment.

Working in conjunction with its local Indian partner, RFS entered into an exclusive agreement to deliver unique expertise, knowledge transfer and quality verification for completion of its new production facility.

Covering an area of around five thousand square meters, with capability to grow, the plant will focus primarily on the manufacture of RFS microwave antenna systems for various global and domestic companies in this line including NEC group, which is a global leader in the provision of microwave radio solutions, and a major provider of end-to-end radio link networks in the booming mobile telecoms markets of APAC - such as India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia.

“We have set-out a five-year strategy to increase our manufacturing capacity and grow our global footprint. Today, RFS has ten manufacturing centres-of-excellence on six continents with 36 technical support and sales offices that enable us to deliver the best possible service and quality to our customers.

The addition of India will enable us to further balance our production capacities, further capture the APAC market opportunity and ensure that we are uniquely positioned to provide an end-to-end solution tailored to the specific requirements of each customer locally,” added Modeste Addra, Head of Radio Link Networks Product Line at RFS. (ANI)