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Huawei looking at $2 billion revenue from India by 2017

Chinese equipment maker Huawei is targeting $2 billion revenues from India operations by 2017-end saying that the sentiment is improving for the telecom sector and the coming years will be good for business.

"The sentiment is improving... We have confidence that following years will be better. Our business plan for three to five years is that we must reach up to $2 billion in India," Huawei Telecommunications (India) CEO Cai Liqun told PTI during the Mobile World Congress here.

The company had revenue of around $800 million from India last year. Globally, its revenues were $39 billion. He added however that the target will be achieved if everything goes well on the policy front.

Asked about the 4G ecosystem, Mr Liqun said it will improve this year as there will be availability of more LTE handsets as all the three operators in China have got a TDD-LTE licence.

Moreover, there will be around 900 million 4G users in China by the end of this year, which will in turn improve the 4G ecosystem in India as well, he said.

"This activity will help the industry and the ecosystem of 4G will grow very fast, and by the end of this year, there will be a $100 LTE smartphone available in the market," he added.

Huawei has provided 4G equipment to Bharti Airtel for Bangalore and Delhi circles.

Globally, the company has also started work on developing 5G technology, which is likely to be available for use by 2020 and it will be spending $600 million on research and development of 5G.

"We are spending $5 billion on R&D this year and out of this $600 million will be spent on 5G," he said. A 5G network can provide speed of 10 Gbps, which is 100 times faster than the mobile technology used currently.