It was not a great year for transmission vendors. Though private operators gave large orders, the same was missing from incumbents. In terms of revenue, the transmission equipment market in FY 2005-06 is estimated at Rs 645 crore, a drop of around 12% from last year's figure of around Rs 730 crore.

The year started with lot of plans both from private operators as well as the incumbent operators but BSNL's and MTNL's large tenders did not fructify. But things are looking rosy now with the coming of a mega 3G tender for incumbent operators.

On private operators front, Bharti, Tata, VSNL and Hutch had done lot of network expansion, whereas in Reliance Infocomm, the focus was more on restructuring of the businesses.

The negative growth has also upset lot of players. In SDH, ECI Telecom is the clear leader, whereas in DWDM, it is Alcatel.

Companies such as Nortel that occupied the number one slot for a long time had to vacate it for ECI Telecom. ECI Telcom has done pretty well in the SDH space, thanks to the large contracts it bagged from Bharti, Hutch, Tata Teleservices (rural coverage and expansion in telecom circles) and VSNL (both national as well as international). Very strong in the private operator space, ECI has also bagged orders for expansion of Gailtel South network.

ECI was the first company to launch MSPP in the country. ECI has been launching 3-4 releases every year, thereby increasing features for all their boxes. To further strengthen its R&D portfolio, the company has opened an R&D center in Mumbai.

Alcatel occupied the number two slot, thanks to its exceptional performance in the DWDM space. The company bagged large orders from Bharti and Tata.  

Nortel was placed at number three, as the company did not receive large orders from either Bharti or Reliance-its two key clients in transmission. In the last fiscal, the company bagged expansion deals from Bharti, GAIL, and Reliance Infocomm.

In the incumbent space, companies such as Siemens, ZTE and Tejas have done fairly well with whatever limited expansion deals announced last year by incumbent operators. Recently, Siemens has bagged STM-16 orders from BSNL. Tejas also expanded its Bangalore facility that houses R&D, optical networking labs, and an advance customer training center. Plans are also afoot to increase its existing staff by around 100 people. Traditional players such as WRI, Fibcom and Tellabs, have not done well and are getting a good fight from players at the top.         

Last year also witness the arrival of new companies such as Orion in the transmission space. In this fiscal, the company has bagged STM-1 deal from BSNL. We might see even Ericsson doing well in the next fiscal now with Marconi coming under its fold.

The outlook for the transmission equipment industry is good and it is expected to grow by around 20-30% in FY 2006-07, as both BSNL and MTNL are talking big in this fiscal. Even Tata is talking about its rural focus, whereas for Hutch and Bharti, it is expansion in East and North East. Reliance Infocomm is not to be left behind, and the company has given large orders to Marconi (now Ericsson).   

Pravin Prashant
pravinp@cybermedia.co.in