The Industry

• The total size of carrier equipment industry in 2000-01 was Rs 9,369.22 crore.

• The V&D100 companies accounted for 81.8 percent of the total industry size. The V&D100 equipment companies totalled Rs 5,746.89 crore while the turnkey companies contributed Rs 1,922.08 crore.

• For a comparison with last year’s figures, the combined equipment/turnkey Top 10 companies contributed Rs 6,965.09 crore. The corresponding figure in 1999-2000 was Rs 5,133.9 crore. This was a growth of 35.67 percent.

• The turnkey business grew rapidly, thanks to the large cable deployment by companies. On the equipment front, almost all big companies did well. Most of the private companies grew by more than 30 percent.

• The new technology companies however, were slower. For example, Cisco which had an impressive 125 percent growth, grew by less than 50 percent, compared to an impressive 101 percent by HFCL and 85 percent by Lucent. Interestingly, both the companies had a mix of government and private orders. Traditional equipment like TDM switching, GSM radio, microwave, SDH and IS 95 CDMA wireless systems sold maximum.

• New technologies like Carrier IP networks, GPRS systems that were expected to be deployed were non- starters. DWDM systems deployment also did not happen though the decision-making process has started. Broadband technologies were deployed by a large number of service providers, but in small ways.

Deployment

BSNL/MTNL

Switching:

• As on 31 March 2001, BSNL had an equipped switching capacity of 399 lakh. The corporation added 71.46 lakh lines, against a target of 72.35 lakh. This was an under achievement of 1.23 percent. The total switching capacity increased by 21.8 percent. In 1999-2000, the corporation had added 65.95 lakh lines, against a target of 58.7 lakh, which was an over-achievement of 37.58 percent. BSNL (DTS earlier) had been over achieving the target for the last few years. It seems to have reached a plateau.

• The total TAX capacity on 31 December 2000 (the latest figures available) was 22.06 lakh. This meant an addition of 2.58 lakh lines (an increase of 13.25 percent) over March 2000, total base of 19.47 lakh. It seems BSNL will under achieve the target here as well, because it had plans to add as much as 5.14 lakh by 31 March 2001. In 1999-2000 too, DTS had underachieved, though by a smaller margin of 7.7 percent. With competition coming in long distance, BSNL may well be fearing the under-utilization of TAX capacity.

• In 1999-2000, BSNL/MTNL started introducing Intelligent Network (IN) services. In 2000-01, fifty locations were provided with IN facilities, taking the total number of stations with similar facility to ninety-seven.

• Last year, BSNL issued a tender of 2.018 million lines for new technology switches in January 2001. The price drop trend continued with L1 Lucent quoting Rs 1,979 per line. The order was placed at that price with Lucent (8,18,000 lines), Siemens (4,00,000 lines), Alcatel (4,00,000 lines), and HTL (4,00,000 lines). HTL accepted the order for only 1,00,000 lines. For the first time, ITI’s bid was rejected. So was Ericsson’s. The total value of the order was worth Rs 340 crore.

• MTNL also bought large new technology exchanges worth Rs 115 crore, at a price of roughly Rs 2,400 per line. Siemens bagged 1,90,000 lines while HTL, Lucent and ITI bagged 95,000 lines each.

Transmission:

• Against an over-ambitious target of 1 lakh route kilometers, BSNL managed to add 54,000 route kilometer of Optical Fiber Cable (OFC), thanks to the unavailability of cable. Private service providers came in a big way
  and seriously affected BSNL’s plans. In fact, the total addition was not only a huge 46 percent underachievement, it was lower than what was added in the previous year.In 1999-2000, DoT had added 63,265 route kilometre, which was almost double of what it had added in 1999-2000.

• BSNL added a total of 583 lckm of Jelly-Filled Telephone Cables (JFTC). But the company is planning to go for distributed switching in a big way, thus hoping to optimize on the cable plant. In 2001-02, therefore, BSNL will deploy less amount of JFTC. The plan as of date is to deploy 473 lckm, though there is every possibility that it may be reduced further.

• On the microwave front, BSNL overachieved by 60 percent against the target and added 16,00 rkm of microwave. This is less than last year’s addition of 19,881 rkm. This was because the company is wanting to move to fiber and use microwave only in some areas. The total base as on 31 March 2001 was 1,85,152 rkm and it plans to add 7,500 rkm in 2000-02.

• BSNL continued to deploy SDH equipment in full swing. It also made new purchases worth around Rs 120 crore, out of which Rs 51 crore was for STM 1 and Rs 69 crore was for STM 4. Fibcom bagged 40 percent of the order while ITI bagged 20 percent. MTNL also bought SDH equipment worth Rs 35 crore in February. In India, SDH technologies from Tellabs and Mraconi are competing for market share.

• In 2001-02, it seems SDH is the mantra for BSNL. In April-June 2001, there has been two tenders from the company for purchase of SDH equipment. One for STM 16 equipment of the order of Rs 79 crore, and another for all STM1/4/16 equipment worth about Rs 46 crore.

• Though BSNL targeted installation of MCPC VSATs in a major way, till December 2000, only forty-three such VSATs had been deployed, as against a target of 164 units. That took the total installed base to 394 VSATs.

• On the satellite front, the BSNL/MTNL also augmented the channel capacity of existing earth stations using Intermediate Data Rate (IDR) facility. By 31 December 2001, IDR facility was available in fifty-four routes in the country. Fifteen routes were provided with this facility in the first three quarters of 2000-01against an annual target of twenty-three.