Chinese telecom major Huawei is planning to set up a manufacturing base in India and looking for a domestic original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to partner with for the purpose.

“We have plans to set up a manufacturing base in India and are looking for an OEM partner,” Huawei Telecommunications (India) CEO Max Yang said here. Mr Yang, however, said it was too early yet to set a dateline for the start of the manufacturing project.

The location for the plant also has not been decided yet. Huawei, incidentally has its largest R&D centre outside China in Bangalore, which employs 1,500 people developing software technology and platforms. “The Bangalore centre is growing fast every year since its start of operations,” Mr Yang said.

The company’s investment proposals had been held back by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board after security agencies had objected to its operations in India. It was also barred from bidding for contracts from state-owned telecom companies. However, the company has just deployed its all-IP CDMA solution in the Tata Indicom’s commercial network in the country after the latter decided to replace its existing networks in the main cities with Huawei’s IP CDMA core network solution and radio access equipment to ready itself for 3G technology.

It has also bagged a nationwide GSM roll-out contract for electronic equipment worth Rs 2,000 crore from RCom.