LTE Base-Station Reference Design by TATA-Elxsi, CommAgility and Radiocomp

Tata Elxsi, CommAgility, and Radiocomp have announced a collaboration to produce an LTE Macro/Micro base-station reference design. This is a significant milestone for an Indian product company at being able to contribute to complex engineering solutions. It is also a compelling example of collaboration between companies that bring complementary skills and are geographically diverse [TATA Elxsi: Bangalore, India, CommAgility: Leicestershire, UK and Radiocomp: Hillerod(Copenhagen), Denmark]. TATA Elxsi probably provided the L2/L3 software stack, CommAgility provided the DSP baseband and physical layer implementation and Radiocomp provided the Radio Head.
The challenge is to convert engineering design wins to commercial success and it is not always a given. For example TATA Elxsi reported a 10% net-profit-to-sales margin in Q2, 2010 with a profit of Rs 15 crores while its larger cousin TCS, which is primarily into services, reported a 24% net profit margin with a quarterly profit of Rs 2169 crores. Notwithstanding these challenges, let us celebrate this milestone in wireless engineering out of India.