With convergence of technologies, the definition of Computer Telephony (CT) is changing almost everyday. VoIP is actually an offshoot of CT. However, looking at it from the Indian market perspective, it can broadly be divided into two categories—voice processing/Fax-On-Demand (FOD) and call centres.

Voice Processing/FOD

• About 17,000 ports were added in 1999-00. Dialogic accounted for 2,000 of these and the rest were from proprietary switch-based
  vendors.

• The total market for voice mail and IVR in 1999-00 is estimated to be Rs 68 crore. With a simple voice mail system on Dialogic platform available at a base price of Rs 28,000, the average per port price Rs 40,000 seems slightly on the higher end. This is explained by two reasons. One, the proprietary systems are costly and two, the per port price in IVR, pre-paid and other such applications are higher.

• About 65 percent of the total ports went for IVRs and the rest for voice mail. This in no way means the Indian users are deploying IVRs for information dissemination in a big way. In fact, 90 percent (by port) of the IVRs are deployed by the DTS and Indian Railways. This also explains the lower per port pricing for IVRs in India. DTS now deploys 16-port IVR system for every 10,000 subscribers. The growth of this market depends directly upon the growth of telephone subscribers.

• With absence of toll-free long distance lines, FOD has not really taken off. The growth of Internet has also affected the growth of FOD systems. People would like to get the information from web sites rather than get it on fax.

• Most major companies who are in this segment—Parsec, Servion, and SISL—have started focusing on the booming call centre business.

Call Centre Solutions

• With so many offshore outsourced call centres coming up in India, this market is experiencing a boom time. Many call centre solution providers have bagged major contracts from these companies.

• In the absence of a proper market model, we found it difficult to estimate the call centre market size. Not including the basic hardware of PBX, CRM software, PC hardware, LAN, MUX (in leased-line based remote call centres) i.e., just taking the cost of ACD (this is estimated as most of the time it comes bundled with the PBX), call centre applications, and the application integration cost, the market could be estimated to be around Rs 16 crore. But the so-called call centre market size could be several times higher, depending upon what is taken into account.

• High-end PBX players are having a booming business. Though Lucent through Tata Telecom still sells higher, in the outsourced call centre segment, Nortel has been giving it a tough competition.

• Interestingly, traditional LAN/WAN integrators have become active in the call centre solutions market, where LAN plays an important role. The company that is giving them a tough competition is Global Telesystems, who had graduated from a Nortel EPABX distributor to an integrator not only in the PBX side, but also in the LAN side.

• Being championed by a few companies, server-based call centres are still restricted to the domestic call centres. However, as the reliability improves, they are likely to give some competition to the PBX-based call centres.

Trends 2000-01

• With large penetration of e-mail, unified messaging is on a comeback trail.

• With web-based customer interaction and its integration with voice call centres becoming global trends, this is likely to be the next opportunity. However, in India, it depends upon allowing voice-over-Internet.

• Domestic call centre market is expected to grow rapidly with growth in e-commerce.