Nortel has earmarked $70 million for R&D for the year 2000 in India. With R&D bases in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, Nortel is extensively into software design. The Indian spending is a part of Nortel's global R&D, which is expected to rise to $4 billion from $3 billion in the last business year.Nortel has also set its corporate eyes on India's big bandwidth market. Said Nortel president Anil Kathod: ``We reckon that -at a low end - there will be investments of around $3.5 billion in the bandwidth generation (in optical fibres and electronics) in the next couple of years. We are in a dominant position to garner a bulk of this market. We are talking to five companies in this regard.'' (Over three-fourths of the Internet traffic in North America travels over Nortel Optical Networks).

Kathod said that Nortel is talking to all major network developers to involve them from business planning stage to installing and managing to even arranging finance for them.

Kathod said that in line with Nortel's global strategy of funding networking technology start-ups, the company will look at similar opportunities in the Indian market. ``We've invested millions in the start-ups. We will also consider acquisitions in India as we've done in a major way globally.''

Kathod said that it was important for India to be at the right side of the digital divide. ``India needs to lay new conduits faster, bring tariffs to globally acceptable level, and ease regulatory controls in issues like voice-over-Internet,'' he added. Addressing the session, Kathod said that the internet would account for 7.6 per cent of the world GDP by the year 2003. Nortel Networks operates in four key areas: Internet telephony, optical internet, wireless internet and intranet services.