Two clarifications here.

First, the V&D100 ‘2000’ gave you a total combined revenue of V&D100 companies as Rs. 28,447.14 crore. This was excluding DTS figures, simply because we did not rank it, it not being a company that time. However, for the purpose of the calculation of growth, we have added its last year’s revenue to last year’s V&D100 figure and then compared with this year’s V&D100 combined revenue, which includes BSNL’s.

Yes, the large difference between the combined revenue figure (Rs 65,034 crore) and the industry size (Rs 57,560.53 crore) is because of double counting. For example, a network integrator does a project with a Cisco router. The router is supplied by a distributor of Cisco. The figure is added to Cisco’s revenue, the distributor’s revenue, as well as the integrator’s revenue, for ranking purposes. While calculating the industry size, however, we have ensured that it is calculated just once, not thrice.

Also, in segments like carrier equipment and data networking products, data networking equipment used by service providers is there in both the segment figures. But while calculating the total industry size, we have added it only once. That is why you will see a figure of Rs. 1,996.5 crore being added as "enterprise networking" revenue and not the total of Rs 3,217 crore. The rest - Rs 1,220.5 - crore accounts for data networking equipment being sold to service providers.

Beyond The Numbers

While numbers do tell you a lot, they can never give you a complete picture. For example, last year, most telecom equipment makers registered robust growth. Yet, it can at best be called a mixed year. Because, a lot of new technology that was expected to be deployed by service providers (in certain cases, even enterprises), did not happen. The Department of Telecom Services, the biggest of them all, had raised a lot of hope with its VoIP tender in May 2000. It was scrapped.

Unlike VoIP, DWDM is not what the people are sceptical about. Everyone is pretty sure that it is the transport technology for core networks. Yet, except tenders and a few announcements, there has been little deployment of the technology. By the end of 1999-2000, it was expected that a lot of fiber would be laid in India. And on the hope that life in information highway would be faster, a lot of us, common Indians, did not mind the occasional slowing down of life on our city roads. Yet, ducts is what has been laid-off so far in most cases. Few companies have actually blown fiber into the ducts.

The cellular service providers, despite having a great time, did not go in a big way for GPRS. A handful of metro service providers have gone for the technology. None has made the service available. Meanwhile, SMS really caught the imagination. That probably is the one big positive development to have happened last year. Unfortunately, as a VOICE & DATA survey found out, the service providers, who plan to charge for content in near future, do not have a fair idea of what type of content people want. They have never bothered to ask the users. Competition…a long way to go.

Another big hype was broadband. At the end of the year, the number of such connections is less than 50,000. And less than half of that has been provided by the ISPs, who were supposed to provide them. The rest were provided by companies, who were invited to participate in the game—the fixed service providers—so that most Indians get to have access to a telephone, if not own a telephone. The progress on that front is known to everyone. The point is that not much happened last year as well in terms of numbers.