Wipro and HFCL Announce 5G Product Development Partnership

The companies will collaborate on a portfolio of 5G products for the telecommunications sector, including 5G radio access network and 5G transport equipment

New York, USA, and Bangalore, India: Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting, and business process services company, and HFCL Limited (BSE: 500183; NSE: HFCL), a leading telecom equipment manufacturer and technology provider, announced that they have entered into a partnership to engineer a variety of 5G transport products that include Cell Site Router, DU (Distributed Unit) Aggregation Router, and CU (Centralized Unit) Aggregation Router.

Organizations around the world are embracing 5G technology for its potential to accelerate innovation, enable new business models and drive revenue. With expertise in product engineering, transport network technologies and 5G, Wipro will co-develop equipment with HFCL. The offering aims to empower enterprises to realize their 5G-enabled vision and increase the speed with which they can bring high-quality 5G solutions to market. Wipro will leverage Tarang Labs, its product compliance and certification labs in Bangalore, for hardware integration, validation and pre-certification.

HFCL is currently investing in a portfolio of 5G products for the Radio Access Network (RAN) and Transport. The transport network of Communication Service Providers (CSPs) needs modernization due to much higher bandwidth per 5G cell site, densification of cell sites in 5G, Ethernet and IP based transport, and new services with stringent latency requirements like Drones, Autonomous Vehicle and Robotics-based precision manufacturing. HFCL is developing 5G transport products for the fronthaul, midhaul and backhaul to help CSPs transform their transport network.

“We are proud to partner with HFCL in their journey to invent the next generation of 5G products for network service providers in India and globally. We will leverage our strong experience in network equipment engineering, expertise in 5G/LTE and VLSI (Very-Large-Scale Integration) system design, engineering design services and embedded software. We are confident that this collaboration will ensure an accelerated go-to-market for HFCL,” said Satya Easwaran, Country Head, India, Wipro Limited.

“Wipro is a key partner for HFCL because of its world-class engineering and in-depth experience on hardware design, embedded software and its in-house certification and compliance labs (Tarang). HFCL's comprehensive portfolio of 5G transport products (which are under development), that include Cell Site Router, DU Aggregation Router and CU Aggregation Router, will enable CSPs to modernize their backhaul networks and make them ready for 5G services. These 5G transport products, based on open standards, will help operators realize the benefits of network disaggregation, and are in the true spirit of ‘Make in India’ for the world,” said Mahendra Nahata, Managing Director, HFCL.

HFCL’s 5G Transport products are based on merchant silicon, network dis-aggregated architecture, and on open standards like TIP (Telecom Infra Project), and OCP (Open Compute Project). Wipro has developed multiple cell site routers for CSPs globally, and is also active in the TIP community.