BANGALORE: Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson plans to hire 82 engineers for its R&D centre in Bengaluru this year as the company looks to develop technologies for next generation networks.

Bengaluru is a major R&D centre for Ericsson which employs a 550 strong workforce, working on solutions for India as well as for global markets. The company said it plans to further augment this facility this year by expanding its engineering base by around 15 per cent. Ericsson plans to add to its workforce by hiring in the areas of cloud, IP routing, network function virtualisation (NFV), and virtual platforms.

"This will help solidify our foundation and sharpen our focus in IP which continues to be an area of investment and growth for us," Sanjeev Tyagi, Vice President and Head of Ericsson's Business Unit Cloud & IP, R&D India told PTI.

Tyagi said the objective before the team is to build carrier grade IP routers and solutions which will help Ericsson build a leadership position in IP and the company is intensely focused on achieving this objective. In addition to the IP Edge portfolio, the Bengaluru R&D team has been working on software defined networking (SDN) technologies. The centre is also working on 5G technologies.

"Our research team is developing advanced technologies in the areas of cloud, management and operations of emerging networks for 5G and the networked society," Tyagi said. Ericsson estimates that by 2020 there will be 26 billion connected devices in the world.

Globally, Ericsson spent 36.3 billion SEK last year on R&D. In India, Ericsson has three R&D facilities - Gurgaon, Chennai and Bengaluru and over 160 patents have been filed by these centres in India.

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