Acterna is one of the leading communications test companies in the world. Vishnu K Goel, managing director-India and director - South Asia Pacific, Acterna India, shares his views about the Indian T&M market with Gaurav Patra

What is your perception about the Indian T&M market?
The T&M market in India is in a very peculiar stage. Traditionally, the T&M companies were totally dependant on government projects. Particularly the Indian telecom sector and on BSNL. The process of buying bulk and multiple number of products is also very relevant. Because of bidding the price drops so low that in most cases it is not profitable. Of late, this trend has gone through a lot of changes. After the corporatisation of BSNL, the buying process has also undergone some changes and the requirement is now rationalised from their point of view. We have seen that T&M companies are suffering huge losses serving that market. I believe that market can be served by all kinds of vendors who have not as much regard for the quality of the product. So, that has been a loss-making proposition for most companies. The growth of telecom T&M will be with new operators challenging the government operators and who are clearly considering T&M as an investment and not merely as an expenditure. T&M should be considered as a key business tool. Unfortunately in our country, we have not seen anybody making use of this investment from that direction. This is happening because most of these T&M players were not able to communicate the strategic importance of T&M to all the telecom service providers. So, the responsibility lies with no one else but the T&M equipment vendors. And this is what we are trying to do at Acterna. We believe T&M has to be seen as a strategic investment to fulfil their customer-oriented objectives. If the service providers see investment in that light, then there is a huge opportunity for the T&M industry.

What trends and opportunities do you see in this segment?
A lot of things are shifting in the T&M market. One of the basic paradigms we are trying to change is the perception of T&M as test and management from test and measurement. So, after you have carried out the testing and the measurement you would like to make a closed group system by which you can manage the whole network. Another opportunity is that there is a great need in terms of offering real high value-add services to telecom companies. There is great scope to provide such services to someone who is oriented towards offering that quality of service to potential customers. So, the service providers should invest in areas where they can see the importance from business objectives. Then this industry will have a really bright future. It is unfortunate that none in the T&M industry has driven the cause.

The overall T&M market growth was nearly 20 percent? How did you manage a high growth rate?
The major difference between Acterna and the general T&M companies is that the other big T&M players have got a plethora of products and are present in almost all the market segments like automotive industry, railways and process control industry. But our position is one where we are totally dedicated to the communication niche of the industry. And when you are a niche player, your energy, focus, and your ability to provide solutions, which can add real value to your customer, is pretty high. We are very focused on the communications market, so we can offer more solutions in that limited space, which is about 20-25 percent of the whole industry. And the other thing is that in most of the communications industry the growth area is not going to be in RF or Microwave. It is rather going to be IP and data testing in optical technologies and in broadband technologies. So, basically it helps us in shifting towards IP testing because, communications is going from circuit switch mode to packet switch. These areas are real core areas for Acterna. And in India we have an advantage of exploiting our global experience and local expertise to cash in on those markets.

How important is the Indian market for Acterna?
We are growing fastest in the Asia Pacific region. Two markets in Asia, which everybody is eyeing, are China and India. India is a strategic market for Acterna, because here the need for rolling out services and systems is the strongest. The other major reason why this market is significant is the availability of excellent IT/telecom talent. When there is an abundance of highly qualified manpower you can leverage that for global services.