Telecom sector is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. It has seen exponential growth since the last decade. We have the second largest market in the world and around 1.9 billion subscribers (as of August 2018). This growth and success are a result of both the service providers and the manufacturers.
The Telecom Manufacturing industry in the country is also booming, and there are has a good future. Some of the leading telecom equipment players are Huawei, Ericson and the like
A lot of service providers like Bharti Airtel do not produce such telecom equipment in-house and outsource this business to companies like Ericsson or Siemens because of their expertise and experience in the manufacturing business. Also, after the promotion of Make in India, many small companies have also come into the business of Telecom Equipment.
Telecom Equipment refers to the hardware used for telecommunication. Even though the boundary between telecom equipment and IT hardware is becoming blurred day by day due to the growth of the internet and massive transfer of telecom data, there are still a few pieces of equipment that are solely a part of the telecom industry.
Let us take a look at the types of Telecom Equipment which can be classified into:
Switches – A kind of transistor that helps connect telephone lines to form a network. They can be analog, digital or voice over IP type.
Customer Premise Equipment – This is what the end users like us have to communicate like telephones or FAX machines.
Several companies manufacture specialized items like few would make only telecom metal equipment, and some specialise only in switches and optical fibre. Then there are vendors like Huawei and Motorola that sell them to the service providers. China continues to be the leader in Telecom Equipment provider followed by United States of America and Japan. China gets around $109 billion in revenue by just Telecom Equipment so you can understand the scope of growth in this industry.
If we talk about India, they have just started getting into the industry with some companies rising. Lack of government support earlier caused some challenges, but now these companies are also gaining prominence.
Transmission Systems – They are the ones that make communications possible. They can be wireless or wired and consists of equipment like repeaters, transmission lines, optical fibre and the like.
Some noteworthy companies that have recently gained traction are: –
Aishwarya Telecom – With customers like Reliance, MTNL, BSNL, and Vodafone this is one of the leading manufacturers of fibre optic test equipment and Cable fault locators. It has revenue of about $10 million (in 2009 – 2010).
Coral Telecom – it is a company that has existed in the industry for over 15 years and is based in Noida. It has a strong presence in the Switch market both India and abroad.
Fibcom – The telecom wing of Suri group, it is involved in providing integrated network solutions, optical transmission products and also handles telecom infrastructure projects. It has a revenue of $55 million and also has a collaboration with Tellabs Denmark.
HFCL – an abbreviation of Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd is as old as 24 years in the industry and deals with products like High capacity optical Transmission systems, Carrier Ethernet Access & Metro transport solution among others.
Kaveri Telecom – Is a listed telecom equipment manufacturer with its R&D unit in Bangalore. It serves for telecom as well as for defence and space industries. It has acquired around 4 North American RF products and Antennas manufacturing companies to ease product launches in the 3G and other areas.
Final Words:
As we can see manufacturing has a lot of scope in the Telecom industry and there is a demand that will only grow shortly and hence there is an opportunity for several domestic companies to grow and expand.
The growth of technology will make telecom services cheaper and more accessible to the public, and hence it will be needed of these companies to provide high-quality products at acceptable rates which are technologically superior than the competitors.
In the years to come, we will see only growth in both the telecom sectors and all other related industry like the telecom equipment manufacturing industry.
