"We are expecting that investments from these players would range between $800 and $900 million during 2005-06 as they have announced their plans to start manufacturing facilities in India," Communication and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran said.
Briefing the media about his visit to Cannes recently and his meetings with the top officials of global telecom vendors, Maran said apart from Nokia, which has already announced its manufacturing plans for India, French telecom major Alcatel would also set up a manufacturing plant in collaboration with its existing PSU partner ITI.
Alcatel has also shown interest in setting up a Wi-Max research centre in partnership with the government's research agency C-DoT. The centre would be a global R&D centre for Alcatel in India.
Alcatel is also doing a pilot project on installing next generation networks and would launch it in March.
He also met Motorola officials and said that the company was exploring the option of manufacturing a $30 mobile phone.