Compliance with ITU and International Recommendations: For most T&M solutions, the specifications are laid out by the international bodies like ITU-T, ETSI and ANSI for accuracy and consistency. The buyer must ensure that the instrument complies with these standards. Since the specifications for the instrument are much tighter than the equipment or device to be tested, their compliance with the International body’s recommendations is essential. If not, the results may lose accuracy and repeatability in the measurement

Portability and Ruggedness: The equipment should be easy to carry and should have easy and accessible connections. It should be rugged enough to support wide range of temperature, jerk and vibrations, and humidity conditions.

Technology Support: The instrument should be such that it supports all the relevant technologiess for testing. It means that if the instrument is designed for the transmission technology testing based on optical fiber then it should support the currently prevailing technology like SDH, POS and ATM on SDH together in one box. This allows the buyer for easy testing in the technology mixed environment and also allows the testing in the area of technology migration.

Application Fitness: The instrument should not be so much general purpose to overkill the investment of the buyer. The instrument should target the correct market segment. For example, there are certain tests that are a must in field installation and maintenance and these are the key concern areas of the network operator. The instrument must be able to do all the tests needed by this segment, but need not include the entire lot of tests required in manufacturing and R&D. This will result in value for money for the buyer. Operators do not use R&D and manufacturing types of tests as they come in the area of factory acceptance test (FAT).

Scalability: The instrument should be such that it is able to scale to higher bandwidth, interface, and testing requirement. It should also be possible to upgrade the instrument without hardware and software limitations so that the investment remains protected in the evolving technology. For e.g., GPRS and 3G technologies are still in the growth stage and have not yet matured. Modifications are happening in these technologies and the instrument should be able to upgrade to the changing technology and protocols.

Pre-sales and After-sales support: The company should have a direct presence in India so that they can advise and optimize the testing and test times. There should be a strong technical support team in the T&M supplier company so that instant solutions can be found while troubleshooting.

Repair and Uptime Support: The T&M supplier should have a standard calibration, repair and support center so that support of the order of 24/7 can be obtained.

Solution Level from the Company: The T&M company should have the core competence in the area of test and measurement and should not be a non-focus segment in the company. Also the company should be able to provide the test and measurement solution in all the segments right form R&D to operations. Such companies are able to offer the perfect fit for the T&M solution to the market.