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The telecom T&M market has registered a robust growth rate of 23.01% in the FY 2008-09 over the previous fiscal, clocking a revenue of Rs 721.93 crore. However, this marks a 3% decline in growth compared to 26% growth in FY 2007-08. In fact, India has been witnessing a rapid growth of investments in T&M over the last couple of years.

Defying the economic recession, the Indian telecom sector is continuing to record a robust growth with the wireless subscriber base touching 391.8 mn by March 2009. Operators added 15.6 mn mobile phone customers in March 2009, and a whopping rise over 13 mn subscribers in February.

The number of phone connections in the country, both mobile and landline, has reached 429.7 mn at the end of March 2009 as compared to 413.8 mn in February 2009. With this growth, the overall teledensity reached 36.98 at the end of March 2009 as against 35.65 in February 2009. Apart from this, growth in other segments like broadband has also fuelled the test and measurement market growth. Total broadband subscribers base reached 6.2 mn by the end of March 2009.

From the operators' perspective, there is not much impact for a country like India where the subscriber base is growing substantially and the current teledensity has a huge scope for future growth. The cost reduction by the user might bring the ARPU down, but this reduction is offset by the increase in subscribers and huge opportunity provided by it.

In 2008, before the economic meltdown started, the big drivers for growth in telecom T&M market were strong investments in manufacturing, deployments, and new technologies. The economic slowdown may have some short-term impact on the growth, especially in manufacturing, but the investments in telecom research, development and deployments are expected to grow due to strong market fundamentals and economies of scale.

Agilent has topped the rankings this year as well, registering 15% growth rate with Rs 227.52 crore during FY 2008-09. It had clocked revenue of 197.82 in FY 2007-08. Increasing mobile subscriber base among other things contributed to its growth, though it is a modest growth compared to last year. Agilent managed to achieve this growth despite the severe recession, by offering the broadest T&M portfolio to customers including - Agilent N3900A Modular Network Tester, Agilent Distributed Network Analyzer Platform (DNA) J6801B, Agilent N2X, Agilent Triple Play Analyzer – J6900A, Agilent E6474A Drive Test Network Optimization Platformm, Agilent E7495B Wireless Base Station Test Set.

Spirent Communications, a steady growing company, clocked revenue of Rs 80.03 crore in FY 2008-09 from Rs 73 crore in FY 2007-08, achieving a growth rate of 10%. The company occupied the second place in the top order with a good market share. Spirent is continuing to have aggressive growth plans with robust solutions in telecom space. The company achieved this growth by focusing on testing solutions related to converged IP network, data center, VoIP, 3G wireless and network infrastructure, IMS, IPTV, VOD, and Peer-to-Peer applications.

Aishwarya Telecom recorded 22.86% growth with Rs 43 crore in FY 2008-09 from Rs 35 crore in FY 2007-08. Its major clients for the year was BSNL with 22 crore and Huawei with 2 crore among others. One of its major achievement in the last fiscal was that it designed RF power meters and got orders from Ericsson and Huawei. It designs products based on BSNL specifications and it is the only Indian company which got approved for BSNL specifications for several products.

Anritsu has clocked revenue of Rs 28.8 crore in FY 2008-09, an increase of 88.73% from Rs 15.26 crore in FY 2007-08. Anritsu achieved this robust revenue by offering core telecom T&M solutions for the wireless market. It offers a very broad range of end-to-end test solutions for wireless R&D, manufacturing and field testing and maintenance.

Fluke Networks grew by 33% with Rs 18.62 crore during FY 2008-09, as compared to Rs 14 crore in the last-to-last fiscal. PDR Videotronics has clocked Rs 5.33 crore during the FY 2008-09, a 4.1% increase from Rs 5.1 crore in the FY 2007-08.

Rhode&Schwarz is one of the major players in the T&M space, showing robust growth year-after-year. Its core competency has always been on providing technically advanced solutions catering to the different segments of market, be it R&D, production or maintenance. It has introduced a new range of products and system solutions which are low on capex but very high on quality and expandability.

Concerns
The main concern for the T&M players in the last fiscal emanated from the postponement of large project purchases by the operators as they exercised cautionary approach in spending at the time of the worst global economic scenario. Already, the operators are not spending sufficient amount of money to buy tester in order to maintain networks as per standards. On top of that purchases are not increasing and forex losses.

Outlook
The wireless boom, digital convergence on mobile, and addition of next generation technologies will basically drive the growth in the FY 2009-10. In India, the prevalent technology in the telecom domain is 2G whereas several other countries have already deployed 3G services and are now even migrating towards 4G-such as LTE. The deployment of 3G services by private players in India has been on hold for some time now and might take more time for the upgradation of the base stations. The government-run network operators have started 3G services, and 3G network rollouts by private players will take off in full stream once the spectrum allocation is completed. This will further fuel the demand for T&M solutions.

Increasing subscriber base for operators, expansion of DSL and home Internet subscribers; operators movement towards 3G, WiMax and triple-play services; R&D investments in new emerging technologies like 3G, WiMax, and LTE will drive the growth of the future T&M market in India.

Owing to the continued growth in the mobile subscriber base in India, unlike mature markets, wireless network deployments by existing operators and new operators are taking place. Thus, more demand for T&M solutions is expected in the current fiscal.

Kannan K
kannan@cybermedia.co.in