The reincarnated Hindustan Teleprinters Ltd (HTL) has been consolidating its manufacturing position each year. Emerging as the second largest telecom manufacturer in the country behind ITI has seen its production and sales growth increase continuously. During the year under review, HTL registered 29 percent growth in its sales performance with total sales revenues of Rs 464.36 crore. In 1998-99, its total revenues were Rs 360 crore.

While maintaining the growth in revenues, its production also increased. Its production of switching equipment grew from 8.3 lakh lines in 1998-99 to 14.142 lakh in 1999-00. While the EWSD large digital switching exchanges went up to 9.49 lakh lines, C-DOT switching exchanges crossed 4.5 lakh lines. In revenue terms, the figure for the entire range of switches was Rs 356.40 crore with the EWSD switches accounting for Rs 190 crore and C-DOT contributing Rs 157 crore.

Though switching accounts for the largest chunk of its revenues, it has more than 55 products to give additional revenues. The mechanical products segment consisting of Main Distribution Frame (MDF), which is an important adjunct of the exchange equipment, supplied over 22 lakh equivalent lines to garner about Rs 74 crore.

A major thrust area for the company was in new technologies like Managed Leased-line Data Network (MLDN), digital cross connects, and Digital Loop Carrier (DLC) systems, etc., and it has earned it remarkable revenues. As a result, its transmission and data and access products fetched it total revenues of Rs 33.82 crore. Additional revenues of Rs 50 crore came in from the Internet products area and SDH.

The significant progress for HTL is primarily because of its ability to diversify its product portfolio. HTL is able to do that so quickly because of its focussed in-house R&D activities. That is also the prime reason why, in spite of being completely dependent on DoT orders for switching, it has been able to add on additional revenues. It came up with new versions of C-DOT exchanges—SM XL and MAX XL—and prototype models for CCTTT #7 signalling, ISDN, and IN solution based on C-DOT design. A proto-type for 2 Mbps HDSL is ready. It is also working towards HDSL range of products that would enable the use of the same pair of wire for 15-30 subscribers, against the present norm of "one pair, one subscriber". It has also been doing major work on the data modems. While it has got the type approval for 33.6 Kbps modems, it has developed 56 Kbps modem as well.

Like most government-owned companies, the biggest reason for the sluggishness is the huge size of the workforce. Though it has been able to prune that to 1,000, it is still a challenging proposition for the company. And the other biggest challenge is that it is purely DoT-oriented. In spite of the emerging non-DoT market and diverse products, it lacks aggressive marketing. If it is able to restructure to that mould, there is no reason why it cannot grow further high. And especially when it expanded its product ranges to the PMP radios, SDH and WILL areas. It is also actively working on HDSL, Digital Circuit Multiplication (DCM) equipment, and ADSL products. These products, it hopes, will take off during the current year. With these aggressive product lines it expects to cross the Rs 600 crore mark this fiscal.