SCIENCE

DragonWave and Himachal Futuristic Communications have announced the formation of a Joint Venture to provide leading packet microwave solutions to the Indian market. DragonWave will own 50.1% of the equity in the Joint Venture and the balance of the equity will be owned by HFCL.

The Joint Venture, based in Delhi, will utilize HFCL's local market knowledge and expertise to sell and market DragonWave products in India. HFCL will provide the Joint Venture with local manufacturing of DragonWave products from its state-of-the-art telecommunication equipment manufacturing facility at Solan, Himachal Pradesh.

With the recent completion of India's 3G and BWA radio-access spectrum auctions, Service Providers are preparing to rollout 3G and 4G IP based networks in order to support the bandwidth and service requirements of the new HSPA, LTE and WiMAX base stations that will use this spectrum.

"We have had substantial success in the Indian telecom market, and partnering with DragonWave will help us build on that position at this pivotal moment of the introduction of 3G and 4G services in India," said Mahendra Nahata, Managing Director of HFCL. "DragonWave offers a complete range of native-IP, globally proven products that are unmatched in their performance, scalability and reliability, and these are the qualities our customers will require as they build high-capacity infrastructure to roll out innovative, data-centric services."

Founded in 1987, HFCL has developed expertise in manufacturing of high-performance optical and radio transmission systems, wire-line access systems and a wide range of subscriber terminals. Furthermore, HFCL has executed turnkey projects for a large number of Indian private and government operators and major GSM vendors, providing services such as marketing, planning, survey, supply, installation, and post-sales support. With more than 20 offices, HFCL's corporate footprint is countrywide.

"We share a vision with HFCL that this is the moment to enter the strategically important Indian market. HFCL has all of the attributes we are looking for in our partner - robust local presence, long-standing relationships across the country's customer base, a strong contract manufacturing capability that will shorten the supply chain to Indian customers and proven sales, marketing and support organizations," said Peter Allen, President and Chief Executive Officer of DragonWave. "Our Horizon products are enabling adoption of 3G/4G services in a number of markets already, and this joint venture with HFCL will provide DragonWave an accelerated, entry to India and a promising opportunity for customer, market and revenue diversification."

The Joint Venture structure will permit the consolidation of the financial results of the Joint Venture with DragonWave's financial results. The necessary steps required to establish the Joint Venture are expected to be completed in the next few months.

DragonWave Horizon products operate in the licensed frequencies between 6 and 38 GHz. An uncompromised product design delivers pure "packet" microwave performance with support for both TDM and IP traffic and with software-scalable, ultra-low latency transport of up to 4 Gbps per link. Extremely easy to deploy and manage, DragonWave products deliver carrier-grade (99.999%) interference-free performance in next-generation IP networks.