Technology Options
Telecom operators across the world have a common problem–how do they take care
of quality of service (QoS) and network performance issues even as the amount of
traffic, especially data grows rapidly. On the other hand, the emergence of 2.5G
and 3G wireless networks meant to support high-speed data traffic offers new
challenges. It is in this backdrop that test and measurement (T&M) equipment
manufacturers are delivering a new generation of solutions.
l Software-based
Solutions Gain Prominence: T&M equipment manufacturers are placing
greater emphasis on software to make measurements easier to use, faster, and
more accurate. Since these software-based testing equipment use PC-based
platforms, the same hardware can be used to test any of the standards like GSM,
GPRS or CDMA by simply changing the software. In other words, PC is most likely
to become the standard T&M instrument hardware in the near future with the
integration of software testing tools into it. These solutions are easy to
configure (according to user requirements), use and also come at a lower cost.
More than that, for example, National Instruments promoted the concept of ‘virtual
instrumentation’ allows users to design and configure their own instruments
according to their requirements using software tools. On the other hand
solutions like Agilent Technologies’ new wireless application measurement
software (WAMS), the central component of its data service assurance program,
enables RF engineering teams to automate data traffic, quantify wireless data
user experience and find the cause of problems through leading visualization and
analysis tools, thereby reducing the cost of wireless data rollout. WAMS enables
RF engineers to build complex serial and parallel test sequences via an
easy-to-use and customizable interface. Tests are independent of wireless
technology and include multimedia message service (MMS), short message service (SMS),
HTTP, FTP, e-mail, wireless-application protocol (WAP), and PING.
l Portable
T&M Instruments: T&M companies are making handheld T&M devices
with more functions and power. For examples, service providers can expect a
growing number of portable analyzers that can meet the needs of burgeoning field
applications. What is good about these instruments is that even though they are
portable they are powerful and feature-packed. Also, many T&M equipment
manufacturers are trying to harness the power and portability of handheld
computers. For example, Noah Industries (Melbourne, FL) offers a fiber-optic
power meter that ties into PDAs and provides graphs of the fiber’s
performance.
l Realtime RF
Analyzers: Tektronix has come up with a new series of real-time spectrum
analyzers that provides the ability to trigger, capture and analyze time-varying
RF signals. RF signal characteristics are becoming more complex as RF
communications increasingly replace wired technologies in applications ranging
from inventory identification to video games. Today’s RF signals carry complex
modulation and change from one instant to the next, hopping frequencies, spiking
briefly, and then disappearing. As a result, these RF signals are difficult to
measure and present unpredictable behavior, making engineers’ ability to
observe RF devices with existing spectrum analyzers extremely challenging. This
evolution in RF technology has spawned an unprecedented demand for a new
approach to spectrum analysis. Realtime spectrum analysis has emerged as the
vehicle to address this RF technology evolution.
Buying Tips
Compliance with ITU and International Recommendations:
For most T&M solutions, the specifications are laid out by the
international bodies like ITU-T, ETSI and ANSI for accuracy and consistency.
The buyer must ensure that the instrument complies with these standards.
Since the specifications for the instrument are much tighter than the
equipment or device to be tested, their compliance with the International
body’s recommendations is essential. If not, the results may lose accuracy
and repeatability in the measurement
Portability and Ruggedness: The equipment should
be easy to carry and should have easy and accessible connections. It should
be rugged enough to support wide range of temperature, jerk and vibrations,
and humidity conditions.
Technology Support: The instrument should be such
that it supports all the relevant technologiess for testing. It means that
if the instrument is designed for the transmission technology testing based
on optical fiber then it should support the currently prevailing technology
like SDH, POS and ATM on SDH together in one box. This allows the buyer for
easy testing in the technology mixed environment and also allows the testing
in the area of technology migration.
Application Fitness: The instrument should not be
so much general purpose to overkill the investment of the buyer. The
instrument should target the correct market segment. For example, there are
certain tests that are a must in field installation and maintenance and
these are the key concern areas of the network operator. The instrument must
be able to do all the tests needed by this segment, but need not include the
entire lot of tests required in manufacturing and R&D. This will result
in value for money for the buyer. Operators do not use R&D and
manufacturing types of tests as they come in the area of factory acceptance
test (FAT).
Scalability: The instrument should be such that it
is able to scale to higher bandwidth, interface, and testing requirement. It
should also be possible to upgrade the instrument without hardware and
software limitations so that the investment remains protected in the
evolving technology. For e.g., GPRS and 3G technologies are still in the
growth stage and have not yet matured. Modifications are happening in these
technologies and the instrument should be able to upgrade to the changing
technology and protocols.
Pre-sales and After-sales support: The company
should have a direct presence in India so that they can advise and optimize
the testing and test times. There should be a strong technical support team
in the T&M supplier company so that instant solutions can be found while
troubleshooting.
Repair and Uptime Support: The T&M supplier
should have a standard calibration, repair and support center so that
support of the order of 24/7 can be obtained.
Solution Level from the Company: The T&M
company should have the core competence in the area of test and measurement
and should not be a non-focus segment in the company. Also the company
should be able to provide the test and measurement solution in all the
segments right form R&D to operations. Such companies are able to offer
the perfect fit for the T&M solution to the market.
|
Market Information
FY 2002-2003 was a particularly good year for the T&M industry. With the
wire-line operators in the country making huge capital investments to put their
network backbones in place, the demand for T&M requirement went up.
Traditionally, BSNL and MTNL have been the bulk buyers. But during FY 2002—03,
the two largest business houses in India, Tata and Reliance, made significant
investments in T&M. Since the network build-up phase is the one where the
need and investment on the T&M gear is the highest, the wired line segment
procured optical and transmission test products. On the other hand, growth in
the wireless segment was mostly confined to capacity augmentation and
upgradation of existing networks. Network planning and management tools were
bought in this space.
|
l Market Shares: With a
lot of all-round activity in the telco space, the T&M industry is estimated
to have registered a 34 percent growth over the previous year. The total size of
the T&M communications market was estimated to be Rs 295 crore during FY
2002—03. Apart from the service provider sector, the broadcast industry also
bought T&M solutions in a big way. The defense and the PSU sectors continued
to procure a good deal of T&M equipments. The estimated buying by the
service providers was close to 56 percent of the total business, while that by
the manufacturing and the defense sectors was 11.9 percent and 10.2 percent
respectively. The broadcasting industry accounted for 7.8 percent share.
Agilent, Acterna, Tektronix, Rhode & Schwarz, and Anritsu are the top
five players in the business. Together, they account for about 82 percent of the
communications T&M market. Agilent is the largest T&M supplier with an
estimated business of Rs 100 crore, followed by Acterna at Rs 61 crore and
Tektronix at Rs 32 crore. A global T&M vendor, Agilent has a comprehensive
range of solutions including spectrum analyzers, network analyzers, and antenna
testers, and also offers design, network optimization, technology migration, and
implementation services. While Acterna is strong in OTDRs and network analyzers,
Tektronix is very strong in protocol analyzers. Acterna is focused on the
optical, access, and IP space. Tektronix is the clear leader in protocol
analyzers space with close to 85 percent market share.
Rhode & Schwarz and Anritsu are strong in the RF and microwave T&M
equipment business. This part of the equipment business in the country has been
close to Rs 130 crore. While Agilent is estimated to have 45 percent of the
market share in that segment, Rhode & Schwarz and Anritsu command about 25
percent and 6 percent market share respectively.
Others in the industry–ICT, Fastech, Seven Hills, Aishwarya Telecom, and
Trinity Electronics–have big customers in the government sector. ICT
Electronics/Trend address the PDH, SDH, and SONET technologies, and have bagged
orders for SDH analyzers, and ATM, ISDN, and DSL testing solutions. Majors like
Sunrise, Nettest, and Fluke are present through distributors. For example,
Fastech distributes Sunrise Telecom’s solutions and is strong on the hand-held
side. Other large distributors include AIMIL, Aplab, Forbes Gokak, Meera
Agencies, Scientific Mes-Tek, and VXL.
l Trends and Drivers: The
spending on T&M as part of the network costs is dismally low in India. While
globally, the cost of T&M equipment is 5—8 percent of the total network
cost, in India, the figure is as low as 0.1 percent. Indications are that the
T&M spend will go up in the coming years. More so because the new service
providers are still in the rollout phase.
Companies are still seeing T&M investment as expenditure. However, in
future, they will see it as an investment as they will be required to
differentiate on quality, better customer service, reliable networks and
increased productivity.
Earlier, sanctions were a major hindrance in the growth and propagation of
T&M. It must be remembered here that the major suppliers of T&M
equipment are global vendors, primarily those from the US. And the easing of the
US sanctions since October 2001 has enabled them to sell a much broader range of
products. During the sanctions phase, even the sale of an oscilloscope with 1G
sample per second performance was prohibited. Post the sanctions, vendors can
today sell to agencies like Aeronautical Development Establishment, the
Electronics and Radar Development Establishment, Bharat Electronics, HAL, DRDO,
and ISRO. Today, the clearances to supply products are accomplished in four to
six weeks time. Since the easing of sanctions, major vendors from the US have
got several hundred clearances for their equipment.
Another concern is the duty structure. Though some sops and concessions have
been made for import of network equipment over the last couple of years, T&M
equipment has had no major concessions. The duty structure is still as high as
51 percent for some products. More than the duty concessions and fiscal
provisions, the T&M industry believes that there has to be a paradigm shift
in the minds of the CTOs and the CEOs.
As mentioned earlier, service providers were the biggest buyers of T&M
equipment. They bought spectrum analyzers, network analyzers, protocol
analyzers, optical time domain reflectometers (OTDR), optical spectrum analyzers
(OSA) and plesiochronous digital hierarchy and synchronous digital hierarchy (PDH/SDH)
analyzers and handheld testers. BSNL and MTNL were the big customers and they
will continue to remain too. During FY 2002—03, the new basic service
providers and the ILD and DLD operators helped promote the case of the T&M
industry. Reliance was one of the biggest buyers. It is estimated to have
invested about $15 million on test, monitoring, and management equipment. Bharti’s
investment is estimated to be $5 million and that of Tata, around $3 million.
Most of the large vendors have had significant wins.
Besides operators, the broadcasting players have also been procuring T&M
equipment. This has been facilitated following the government’s open-sky
policy and the permission to uplink out of India. Prasar Bharti has invested in
DVB terrestrial systems and in converting their old analog to digital. Star,
Sahara, Sun, and Eenadu have also invested significantly. This sector alone has
invested close to Rs 23 crore during the year. Several software and hardware
companies like Federal and Wizworks are developing products like cable TV modems
and are buying T&M equipment. Tektronix is a clear leader and is estimated
to have 90 percent share of the market.
The telecom segment will be the most promising for T&M vendors for a
couple of reasons. One, with the deregulation, the number of operators is
increasing as well as maturing. Further, the thrust today is on teledensity. As
a result, the emphasis will now be on quality of services. So the potential
market for T&M equipment is likely to scale up. The signs are potent now.
Before deregulation, T&M vendors were totally dependent
on the government type of projects. Primarily, the L1 business dominated the
T&M equipment. It meant bulk purchase of hardware where vendors had no
choice but to quote the lowest. Things have changed now after the entry of the
private sector and corporatization of BSNL. There has been rationalization in
procurement.
Another noticeable trend is in solutions. Large vendors are
pushing solutions rather than boxes. Even oscilloscopes are being sold with
solutions built around them. Tektronix has sold many such solutions. Similarly,
Acterna is talking about test and management solutions. And this solutions
approach will gain further ground.
|
T&M Vendors
T&M Vendors |
||
Vendors | Description | Website |
Acterna | Acterna, a privately-held company, is the world’s largest provider of communications test solutions for telecommunications and cable network operators. |
www.acterna.com
 |
Agilent Technologies |
Agilent, a global leader in test and measurement equipment, offers a wide range of T&M products and solutions for telecom, enterprise, IP, wireless, and cable environments. |
www.agilent.com
 |
Fluke Networks |
Fluke Networks markets state-of-the-art Network SuperVision solutions that support the installation, analysis and monitoring of enterprise and telecom networks and the installation and certification of the fiber and copper forming the foundation for those networks. |
www.flukenetworks.com
 |
GL Communications |
GL Communications Inc. provides PC-based test, analysis and simulation products and consulting services to the global telecommunications industry. |
www.gl.com
 |
National Instruments |
Leveraging the PC and its related technologies, National Instruments has pioneered the concept of virtual instrumentation. It offers software and hardware solutions in the areas of optoelectronics and fiber optics, access communication and consumer device. |
www.ni.com
 |
NetTest | NetTest is focused on servicing two areas of the telecommunications network, namely installation and maintenance and network monitoring and optimization. |
www.nettest.com
 |
Racal Instruments |
Presence in a wide variety of T&M products that include general purpose test equipment, automatic test equipment, VXIbus modules, laser diode and photonics test systems and burn-in stations, chassis, switching, and turnkey test system integration. |
www.racalinstruments.com
 |
Sunrise Telecom |
The company claims to leading the telecom portable test equipment industry forward through innovations like the use of a graphical interface for presenting information on circuit status and feature upgrades accomplished by means of a software memory card. |
www.sunrisetelecom.com
 |
Tektronix | Tektronix, Inc. provides measurement solutions to the communications, computer, and semiconductor industries worldwide. |
www.tektronix.com
 |
Tenet Technologies |
Tenet’s solutions include network bandwidth management systems, protocol analyzers, network simulators, bulk call generators for communication networks and analyzers for LAN/WAN. |
www.tenetindia.com
 |
Changing Role of T&M
Network operators and service providers are going to deploy and operate
converged PSTN and IP telephony networks. In order to satisfy the changing needs
of their customers, more and more value-added services are going to be provided
over and above the standard ones like voice, data, and video. In a
multi-operator scenario, these services need to be managed and delivered as per
the expectations of the existing customers while meeting the complex billing
needs. In addition to this the operators should be able to ramp up services
quickly to acquire new customers.
Thus the role of T&M is changing from the perspective of network
operators or service providers. In addition, to provide the basic support &
diagnostic tools during the planning, installation and deployment and
optimization phase, the tools need to be integrated into today’s
multi-technology and distributed network environment with the following
objectives:
- Resolve the customer problems faster
- Maximize the productivity of technical personnel
- Manage the multi-vendor and multi-operator interfaces with the right
insights - Protects your investments which can be scaled up with your growing needs
- Provide higher quality of services and be able to identify the problems
before your customer does
The T&M solutions and systems should be able to provide support towards
the above objectives and meeting the cutting-edge technology needs that are
getting deployed in the networks, for example, XOIP, MPLS, Ethernet or Gig-E
over SDH and the latest wireless access technologies. Over and above the
standalone tools, the distributed measurement and analysis capability needs to
be designed into the network itself, providing efficient and centralized view of
the health of the network.
Test Instrument Categories
Network test instruments are divided into two basic categories: Physical
Layer Analyzers and Higher Protocol Layer Analyzers. These categories are linked
to the OSI Reference Model. Higher protocol layer analyzers can perform test and
measurement across six layers of the OSI model; whereas, physical layer
analyzers focus on one layer.
|
Physical Layer Analyzers: On the physical layer (OSI Layer 1), the
instruments used to measure electrical and electronic characteristics include
multimeters, cable testers, optical time domain reflectometers (OTDRs),
oscilloscopes, signal level meters, and spectrum analyzers. The most important
parameters measured by these instruments are line characteristics such as cable
length, resistance, attenuation, crosstalk, reflections caused by connectors and
terminating resistors, and electromagnetic interference from external sources.
Higher Protocol Layer Analyzers: On the higher protocol layer (OSI Layer
2-7), processes are monitored and analyzed using protocol analyzers. These
instruments examine frames, packets, data transfer integrity, session
connections, data transformations, and application performance. There are a
variety of protocol analyzers such as universal devices with special modules for
different tasks, small hand-held devices, and software packages installed in
high-performance network node.
Application performance is measured using software agents that simulate
network use by typical applications to determine throughput and other
characteristics.