There is a common perception that the telecom service providers are not
spending enough on T&M, and this is cited a major reason for the low QoS in
telecom services.
On the other hand, the T&M industry in India is still in a profitable
business. And despite the apparently low profits it makes from the telcos, this
is not a market that the T&M players are willing to give up on.
Without fail, all the T&M players are biding their time, waiting for the
day when quality of service will become the differentiator among various service
providers and the telcos will match their international counterparts in
investing in T&M.
Till that day comes, the T&M vendors have even changed their sales pitch.
The T&M equipment is no longer being portrayed as a purely technological
tool. T&M is now increasingly portrayed as test and management (Acterna
going with this trend in the very early 2000s) and their role in increasing
productivity is being portrayed increasingly. Shankar Roy Chowdhury, general
manager (Marketing) – T&M, Agilent Technologies India says, “For
operators, productivity improvement comes from better insight into the root
cause of network failure, such that, the network can be brought back into life
in the fastest manner.” In the same breath he also adds that Agilent has tools
to deliver that goal. Gone are the days when T&M tried to sell to the telcos
the benefits of a satisfied customer. The T&M players had hoped that the
lure of the customer will bring the operators running to the T&M vendors.
That dream obviously did not materialize. Even in the relatively saturated
markets like the metros, the need to improve QoS is not driving any significant
investment into T&M.
Industry sources say that massive network rollouts have not helped the
T&M industry much. Investment in T&M can be broadly divided into two
segments. One that goes into planning and deployment of a network and into
erection of towers, and the other that can take care of the maintenance of that
network, once it is rolled out. Growth of a network will obviously drive demand
for the second category. However, for the former category, a one-time investment
can go a long way for the operators. All that the operator has to do is roll a
truck (with the T&M equipment) to the tower erection site, and then roll it
to the next site. It is unlikely that each operator would need one such truck
for every circle. In fact, with a lot of the tower erection work being
outsourced to smaller agencies, it is not even necessary that there would be one
such truck for every operator. The situation is surely not helped with operators
outsourcing their networks. The only significant recurring purchase in this
scenario is the replacement purchase. With an average lifespan of 10-15 years
for the equipment, the time is not ripe yet for the replacement market to kick
in.
Significant opportunity for the T&M vendors only come up when there are new
players in the market, or when the telecom industry comes up with new services
and offerings. The possibility of new networks being rolled out from scratch is
not seen in the near future – the telecom industry is already bemoaning the
presence of too many players in the market.
The rollout of networks by niche players could have been an opportunity, but
they are likely to outsource the network rollout (including T&M) and that
may again not be a very significant opportunity for the T&M vendors.
The Opportunities
The opportunity for the T&M vendors presents itself in the two new telecom
activities that are currently taking place in India – telecom manufacturing
and R&D/testing for telecom. Telecom manufacturing is the more high profile
of the two, needs much greater investments, but so far it has not invested
significantly into T&M. With most of the production lines coming to India
(with a lot of incentives and nudging from the minister for communications)
being transplanted here from elsewhere, more investment will only come when
these facilities are expanded. For expansion to happen, the markets outside
India will have to find the Indian production facilities lucrative. But China is
already an established giant for provision of the hardware. However, the vendors
don't need a very elaborate setup for catering to this segment. Most of the
production/development for this equipment takes place for a global market, and
the India operations is mostly a sales operation. The T&M vendors in India
are mostly established players outside India and most of the exiting orders even
now are placed abroad and serviced in India. Obviously, even one order for a
manufacturing facility would keep any vendor's India office busy for years,
but that scenario is still a few years away.
The opportunity that has been materializing in India is with the R&D and
test houses. In volume terms, it is insignificant compared to the sale to the
telcos. However, in value terms, it more than makes up for any lost
opportunities with the telcos. A company like Rohde & Schwarz did a business
of about Rs 12 crore with telcos in the last year, but it brought in more than
Rs 30 crore from selling to R&D and test houses alone.
The other opportunity for the T&M industry will come up with the 3G/4G
services. Similar hopes had been raised when the vendors rolled out data
services like GPRS and EDGE, however as these services themselves could not draw
any major following, they could not spur any activity into the T&M sector
either. Except perhaps the Blackberry experience, Internet on mobile is a far
way from being a satisfactory experience and it too can be measured in tens of
thousands (the telecom industry long becoming used to talking in millions).
While mobile wireless is drawing everybody's attention, fixed services are
also set to see a lot of activity on the T&M front, with new service like
VoIP, IPTV, and even WiMAX. Global developments in these fields are almost
simultaneously happening in India. Rollout of IPTV will also drive investment
into T&M. In India, leading service providers are getting ready to deploy
IPTV technology as part of Triple Play roll out. According to a study done by
ABI Research, total subscribers for IPTV may exceed 120 million by 2010 with
Asia Pacific constituting roughly 47% of the total subscribers worldwide. China
and India are seen as major markets.
The opportunity with mobiles of course remains potentially large, with about
4 million subscribers getting added per month, there is pressure to expand
networks fast and at the same time the operators are under pressure to increase
revenues by adding more and more value-added services and make conscious efforts
to attract high ARPU roamers. With operators outsourcing their networks, there
is now an added level of complexity in the networks, which now need to monitor
the QoS being actually offered by the agencies actually managing these networks,
says Sunil Grover. Potentially, this should create demand for high-end network
monitoring systems, over and above the requirement for the 'usual' T&M.
However, this business may not reflect directly in the T&M telecom accounts
of the vendors, as the outsourcing agency may already be having a lot of the
equipment for its other lines of businesses, and it may in turn use it for a
number of telcos.
The uniqueness of India is perhaps the biggest opportunity that the T&M
vendors can cash in on. So far, all the solutions (like the network equipment
that the T&M caters to) are transplanted in the Indian scenario.
Customization of these products is a big opportunity, and many T&M vendors
are now well-geared for catering to this demand with software development teams
already in place in India.
The Offerings
T&M is no longer a diagnostic service. Whether it is chip fabrication or
tower erection, T&M is required in an end-to-end manner. The testing of the
products is increasingly being done in simulated environments; in fact these
tests are also conducted even before any prototypes are materialized. The
software and test environments for these solutions are driving the business on
T&M now. The market for RF analyzers and EMCs remains undiminished, but
software-based testing cuts the development and testing times, thereby making
these tools productive. R&D engineers and managers now need to make fewer
design iterations. Tightly integrated EDA tools, such Agilent EEsoF, can
directly communicate with real world test tools like Vector Signal Generators or
Spectrum Analyzers, and thus help to reduced the design cycle. An engineer in a
manufacturing facility would not only need speed in conducting large number of
tests in a short time, but may also need to use the same tool across different
technologies, so that they don't have to learn new skills for new products.
Also, the trend toward PC-based testing allows various tests to be conducted
from the same console.
Telecom manufacturers require T&M solutions that can support multiple
technologies. In addition, they are concerned about the speed and the cost of
test. Also, the solution should be easy to integrate into a test system. Sunil
Grover of AIMIL Technologies says, “Most of the latest T&M have multi
function, multilayer/multi technology capability either via plug-in modules
and/or software enhancements. This provides testing capability in a single box
helping users to cut cost and improve efficiency with single man-machine
interface and also add new modules and options.”
Shankar Roy Chaudhary adds that RF designs are helping R&D engineers
realize new 3G or WiMAX devices. The manufacturing test solutions are similarly
helping global manufacturers optimize on cost of test. Network optimization and
signaling test tools along with consulting, training, and benchmarking services
are helping in planning, design, deployment, and optimization of 3G networks.
And OSS solutions are helping to manage network and track quality of service.
T&M for IPTV is what most of the vendors are waiting for now. This needs
core router test solutions. Almost all vendors either already have tools for
this need or are shortly coming out with them. Agilent's solution is based on
modular N2X and Network Tester platform that addresses the needs of the IPTV
testing and allow monitoring the quality of user experience. The solution
provides channel flapping per subscriber, allowing the user to model real-world
situations that the device under test (DUT) will encounter. It measures
channel-zapping time on a per subscriber basis and scales to hundreds of
channels and thousands of subscribers, so that service providers can be
confident that the network is not adversely impacted when more users or services
are added. The solution also provides accurate hardware time stamping of both
protocol emulation and traffic packets, so that user can be sure that
measurements are accurate, repeatable, and representative of the real-world
situation.
WiMAX as a technology is still evolving. However, many vendors are ready with
solutions for it. These offering are valuable even in this developing stage, as
real-world testing – after the technology and networks are rolled out –
would be a very costly affair. In looking for these solutions, the users should
see that the products conform to the WiMAX Radio Conformance Tests (RCT), as a
lot of pre-WiMAX equipment is also present in the market.
As service providers ramp up their VoIP service offerings, they need to find
ways to solve service problems quickly and to maintain consistently high QoS.
Service providers cannot manage hundreds of business-critical corporate networks
in the same manner that they manage a single network. Solutions like the Agilent
VoIP QoS Manager can handle the additional complexity and specific requirements
of a service provider environment. Such solutions can monitor the service
quality on every call and service.
And in the midst of this plethora of T&M choices, the enterprises and
telcos can leverage their existing T&M investment as a lot of the
technology-specific measurement features can be delivered through software,
which can be downloaded into the instruments and enabled through user-specific
licenses. This allows customers to upgrade as and when they need the new
capability. With many vendors, tools like Spectrum Analyzers, Vector Signal
Generators, Base Station testers, Mobile Test Sets, Oscilloscopes, Digital
Communication Analyzers can all be upgraded without any hardware change.
Broadcasting is another opportunity that is opening up for the T&M
vendors. While there is already an established broadcast industry, the new
opportunities come from the new digital broadcast systems such as DTH, DVB, and
IPTV. Currently these opportunities are small, but again, some of the T&M
for these services is likely to be common with the service providers' existing
T&M infrastructure. The story that seems to unfold is that only with the
entry of new players offering new service can the fortunes of telecom T&M
soar.
The Challenge
As far as telecom services go, technology is not a challenge. T&M can give
the users a highly in-depth look into the network, and even integrate with the
network to give automated network maintenance, reporting, and management tools.
However as Suresh M Khadakbhavi, manager (Technical), Trend Communications India
puts it: “When the regulator imposes the QoS parameters more forcefully,
investment in T&M can improve.” All vendors also agree that the turning
point will also be when the consumers start demanding better quality. As an
example, the 'broadband' offered by many operators falls below the
prescribed standards, as it tends to peak at a maximum download speed of around
240 kbps instead of 256 kbps. While the T&M tool for measuring this is
available, telcos are yet to feel the need for putting in place automated
management tools that can proactively detect this anomaly and correct it.
The enterprise customer can however demand a certain minimum level of QoS and
with penalty clauses becoming a part of most SLAs, the investment into
enterprise networks is picking up.
Alok Singh
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