The Hindu : Telecom segment spurs growth in T&M tools industry

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 15, 2003

Business

Business

Telecom segment spurs growth in T&M tools industry

By Preeti Mishra

BANGALORE APRIL 14. Large-scale deployment of optic fibre cables, an incremental mobile subscription base and privatisation of the telecom sector, all these factors have propelled a growth in the Indian test and measurement (T&M) tools industry.

Pegged at $50-55 million, the electronic T&M market in India has finally come on its own with an estimated growth of 10 per cent over the coming year. While the highend segment (video/audio monitoring and measurement tools) is dominated by global firms such as Agilent and Tektronix, the tailend of the market comprising electronic test and measurement tools for educational labs has been cornered by the unorganised smaller players.

The complexity of audio and video systems require sophisticated instruments such as T&M tools to verify the quality and compliance of those signals with industry standards. For instance, these monitoring tools help trace "jitter'' (what happens when a signal which has a regular time period starts to diverge from the period) in a signal frequency through jitter analysis.

Besides this, broadcasters, network operators, production and post-production facilities needing to maximise return on equipment investments, require a single instrument (T&M device) that monitors and verifies the quality, content and compliance of audio and video signals.

"We are reaching a phase where the market boundaries have been defined. In the telecom sector, T&M firms can help telecom operators explore new opportunities such as providing QoS (quality of service) due to increased churn in subscribers and also manage/check telecom fraud. Once DTH (direct-to-home) transmission commences in India, it would also open new possibilities for test and measurement firms,'' V. Srinivasan, Director-South Asia, Tektronix (India) Limited, told The Hindu. At present, Tektronix has a 28 per cent of the Indian T&M market.

Moreover the Government's decision to allow video uplinking by private satellite channels (which would set up earth stations) coupled with the analogue to digital conversion process in transmission, offers additional prospects to the T&M players.

Equipment such as MPEG analysers/generators, waveform monitors, synch generators and automated video measurement equipment, jitter analysis, power measurement, gigabit Ethernet testing solutions will be required for these advancements.

Tektronix India which services Tektronix's South Asian operations including India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal with the aforementioned product portfolio expects to record Rs. 80 crores in turnover for 2002-03 (June-May). Last year the company had posted Rs. 70 crores, Mr. Srinivasan said.

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