The government owned telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) on Tuesday joined forces with Nokia to support the launch of its 4G LTE (VoLTE) technology for enabling greater operational efficiency at Nokia's Chennai plant and prepare it for the 5G era with smart manufacturing. The Chennai plant of the smartphone giant will now leverage Industry 4.0 solutions such as Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), connected Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data Analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) to enhance operations and increase productivity, reported news agency IANS. Currently, Nokia manufactures a range of telecom equipment across technologies at its factory in Chennai which is available for both Indian and global customers. The Chennai facility of Noika recently crossed the four-million unit production milestone in its 10th year of operation.

Speaking about the agreement, Anupam Srivastava, Chairman and Managing Director at BSNL said, “Nokia is already one of our key partners in developing the 5G ecosystem, and now we are exploring use cases such as Industry 4.0 that can benefit tremendously with 5G.”

“This network deployment for Industry 4.0 at Nokia's Chennai factory that can be scaled to 5G demonstrates our preparedness to take advantage of new opportunities that will emerge with 5G and IoT in India,” he added. Industry 4.0 works on low-latency, high-reliability networks as well as capabilities in robotics and AI to drive new levels of automation and data exchange in manufacturing industries, resulting in improved operational efficiency and reduced costs. “Our collaboration with BSNL will enable us to leverage the latest technology advancements and continue in our efforts to build the increasingly digitized and connected factory of the future. It will pave the path to smart manufacturing in the 5G era,” informed Sanjay Malik, Vice President and Head of the India Market at Nokia.

The state-owned telecom major is already working with Nokia and Chinese player ZTE on a 5G technology roadmap. Earlier this year, both Nokia and BSNL inked a network modernisation deal to launch the 4G and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services in western and southern regions of India.

(With agency inputs)