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Defying all odds posed by the global slowdown, the Indian telecommunications equipment industry continued to accelerate, even though not at the same pace as it did during the good times. In FY 2008-09 overall growth in the telecommunications industry was 20%; the total revenue earnings grew from Rs 95,407 crore in FY 2007-08 to Rs 1,14,526.9 crore in FY 2008-09.

This year VOICE&DATA's annual survey on the Indian telecommunications industry has an interesting story to tell. The survey which is based on inputs from various stakeholders, including the third parties and the companies themselves, is one of the most sought after research by the industry to gauge its performance. The telecommunications equipment industry can ideally be categorized into three segments-enterprise equipment, carrier equipment and phones. Of these, carrier equipment put up the best show and saw a growth of 27%. Segments like WiMax and transmission equipment were very strong.

Even as WiMax, BWA spectrum auction is still pending in India, the market seems to be open to adoption of the new technology. WiMax alone saw an incredible growth of almost 239% in the last fiscal as against a growth rate of a minuscule 8% in FY 2007-08, the revenue from WiMax equipment grew from Rs 94.5 crore to Rs 320 crore.

Riding a growth wave, the broadband infrastructure industry scaled up from Rs 1,510 crore in FY 2007-08 to Rs 2,221 crore during FY 2008-09, however the market forces brought down the growth rate from 68% to 47.1%.

With new wireless technology making way into the country, the wireless infrastructure segment recorded 39.9% increase in revenue. The other carrier equipments segments that showed high growth were transmission and telecom turnkey.

The enterprise equipment segment felt some heat from the global financial crunch and grew at a modest 15.4% as compared to 27% in FY 2007-08. Owing to the recent incidents and vulnerability of the network, there is an increased concern among enterprises to keep their networks fraud-proof. The network security services clocked a revenue of Rs 739.1 crore, a growth of 62.1%. Other major contributors to enterprise equipment include audio video conferencing and voice solution, which saw an increase of about 62% and 19%, respectively.