Rapid technological development has been a key driver for the growth of the testing and measurement (T&M) market. The three major factors that are impacting the way T&M is being utilised today include faster and smaller semiconductor chips, better and brighter displays, and digital convergence. These advancements have helped shorten the testing process and reduce instrumentation costs, making it faster and more affordable.

Current trends in Indian T&M space

The key growth drivers for T&M in India are:

Investments in research and development (R&D) in existing and fast emerging wireless technologies. These include GSM, EGPRS, WCDMA, HSPA, CDMA 2000, 1xEVDO, IS-95, AMPS, Bluetooth, Bluetooth enhanced data rate, ZigBee, wireless local area networks, 802.11a/b/g, 802.11n MIMO, Wi-Max and mobile Wi-Max, long term evolution (LTE) and LTE Advanced

The existence of a large nascent market for handsets and network equipment, which is, in turn, driven by a rapidly increasing subscriber base DSL, home internet and penetration of IPTV services

3G and LTE service roll-out

Indian versus global T&M markets

India has been a favourite R&D destination for both multinational corporations and Indian telecom companies due to the availability of engineering talent. In fact, a few of the multinationals have made India their manufacturing base to serve various markets. Each segment within the telecom industry has separate T&M requirements:

Indian companies and multinational corporations are investing in R&D to develop cutting-edge technologies. This requires T&M equipment that helps them assess these technologies for future-readiness.

Network and service providers are driven by fast roll-outs and penetration, given the ever increasing subscriber base. Downtime and call drops are critical parameters for these companies and therefore, they require T&M services to ensure quality of service (QoS). There is also a need to optimise opex and identify a reliable T&M vendor.

Challenges

Some of major challenges faced by network and service providers are:

•Wireless data services are expensive to deliver and complex to manage, which is particularly true for countries like India, where the scale of operations is fairly large.

•Forging mobile alliances is a challenge as there may be instances where an operator’s preferred roaming partner is a competitor of its international roaming business.

•Managing content providers’ QoS is also a challenge as services provided by the former are perceived by customers to be the company’s.

•Non-traditional branded competitors like Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, ESPN and Skype are a threat to telecom service providers.

•Mobile number portability (MNP) has led to an increase in the subscriber churn rate, most of which is due to QoS issues.

In sum, QoS and quality of experience (QoE) are considered important performance parameters in the telecom sector.

Operators’ ARPUs and margins are currently under a lot of pressure. With the introduction of MNP, QoS and QoE have become extremely important to retain subscribers and improve ARPUs. Considering this, operators are adopting a mixed approach in building their T&M set-up. For instance, there are separate groups for installation and testing, and detailed troubleshooting for the network. The T&M equipment is procured accordingly.

Future trends

The future of wireless will ride on 3G and 4G (LTE/Wi-Max) deployments, and value-added services. Meanwhile, services such as internet banking, stock trading, videoconferencing, and health care are now available on mobile networks. The rapid uptake of these services is dependent on network reliability and QoS.

The major technologies currently prevailing in the Indian market are 2G, 3G, Wi-Max and LTE. To accommodate these technologies, most chipset designers, protocol stack developers, and other equipment manufacturers are increasing their radio frequency test capabilities in India. In fact, the Department of Telecommunications and several telecom companies may launch test houses in the near future to conduct conformance testing for telecom products being developed in the country.

Today, operators put tremendous pressure on manufacturers to provide equipment that performs at optimum levels and can be upgraded. To achieve this, equipment manufacturers need to make significant investments in R&D.

Gautam Awasthi, General Manager, Marketing, Electronic Measurement Group India