According to Frost & Sullivan, the testing and measurement space in India is set to grow at a CAGR of 19.5 per cent until 2017. This spells good news and increased business opportunities for companies like Tektronix Communication, which focus on helping telecom operators migrate to new technologies and provide them with tools to maximise the use of their existing infrastructure.  

In an interview with www.tele.net.in Laurence Alexander, vice president, marketing, Tektronix Communication discusses growing opportunities presented by the network diagnostics and service assurance market, and the challenges associated with managing data traffic with the advent of new technologies such as 4G.

What is your assessment of the opportunities in the network diagnostics and service assurance space in Asia and in India particular? 

As a region, Asia is one of the fastest growing and most dynamic markets in the world. Common to many of these markets is the need to assure the network’s quality of service and the end-users quality of experience. To achieve this we require diagnostic and assurance products that can cover the breadth of technologies and vendors present throughout the Asian market. 

The Indian market in particular is a market that has experienced tremendous subscriber growth but has done so with little infrastructure investment. A number of the Indian operators, require tools that will allow them to make the most of existing infrastructure. For test and assurance products, this represents unique opportunities to vendors that can support legacy technologies that are vendor agnostic – while at the same time, laying the foundation for next-generation technologies that will ultimately enter the market.

What are the opportunities that you see for network diagnostics and service assurance solutions in Asia?

Our products are strategically important to communication service providers. They allow our customers to save money, help in better utilisation of existing resources and infrastructure. It also helps service providers make more money by identifying new revenue opportunities as a result of knowing how customers are interacting with their services and the network in general.

The overall Asian region is a critical part of Tektronix Communication’s growth strategy. Markets such as Japan and Korea are leading Asia in terms of the advanced services and applications they are trying to deliver and assure.  Markets such as China, also represent unique opportunities – primarily from the perspective of scale and the demands that are being placed on traffic as more Chinese consumers begin to adopt smart phones. Every country throughout Asia represents a unique opportunity to our business – the needs of which can be served through the extensive range of products and solutions that are present within our portfolio.

 What is the company’s strategy to promote business in Asia?

We are looking at promoting our business in Asia by expanding company’s direct sales presence throughout the region, expanding company’s channel partner presence, developing products for the local market taking using resources available to us at our development center in China. We are also working closely with our customers to keep our product roadmaps aligned with their specific needs.

What are the challenges associated with data monetisation and managing data traffic with the advent of new technologies such as 4G?

Today telecom operators require deep insight into the data that is flowing through their network to truly understand subscriber consumption and experience, especially as Over-The-Top (OTT) services and applications continue to erode the telecom operator’s traditional revenue streams. It is critical for the operator to understand which services, devices and customers are driving this change in order to protect against revenue drain, in addition to identifying new opportunities to go after and monetise. Since mobile usage varies tremendously by country and segment, operators need to quickly understand the types of applications that are being used in real-time in order to capitalise on opportunities for targeted custom upsell or cross-sell programs.

Tektronix Communications suite of solutions offer customer insight and depth of network analysis with the ability to capture information on a per-subscriber as well as a per-segment basis, providing operators with the critical information they need to optimise their service mix and to strategically set price points.

What are the solutions offered by the company to help telecom operators move to long-term-evolution (LTE)?

Tektronix Communication offers wide-ranging solutions to help telecom operators to move to LTE. Some of these solutions include Deep Packet Classification solution which enables operators to clearly understand what services are consuming the valuable network bandwidth on a per-subscriber basis enabling them to protect and maximise their revenue-generating potential. TouchPoint provides the ability to proactively monitor and manage, in real time, the lifecycle experience of every customer, ensuring true end-to-end quality of experience. GeoProbe G10 features a distributed architecture optimised to handle high bandwidth IP traffic. Other popular solutions that Tektronix Communication offers mobile operators include Iris Analyzer toolset, IrisView, Iris Performance Intelligence, K2Air LTE monitoring probes. 

What are the trends in network diagnostics and service assurance solutions business?

The industry is going to see best-of-class products to best-of-breed platforms. Many operators today are moving away from stand-alone point solutions to platform solutions that can be leveraged across multiple departments. These platform based solutions save operators in terms of leveraging a common data set to erase ambiguity between departments, leverage a common user interface, for less training and maintenance, and are easier to support.  The industry is going to shift towards higher-bandwidth monitoring probes and more cost-effective probing and data collection elements

What is the focus area for Tektronix Communications in next two to three years?

Tektronix Communications dominates the LTE assurance market globally with more than 50 per cent share, and we’re currently working with many top tier operators in the Asia-Pacific region to deploy LTE. With our complete portfolio of solutions and services that simplify network complexity, Tektronix Communications is concentrating on working with mobile operators who are migrating to LTE and 4G networks. The company is focusing on providing mobile operators solutions that work across multiple technology domains such as Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Terrestrial Radio Access Network, Evolved Packet Core, IP-based Multimedia Services I and Voice over LTE.

These offerings from Tektronix Communications’ are targeted to telecom operators to address key LTE issues as part of initial market roll-out, or in the future, as their business and customer needs evolve.