Telecom IT Solution

Globally, the

communications industry is emerging as one of the biggest users of information technology.

Unfortunately in India, telecom has not been able to live up to that kind of reputation,

primarily due to the policy and regulatory roadblocks which have affected the growth of

the newly opened telecommunications industry.

The size of the total telco solutions

market in India is still small compared to the tremendous potential that it has. According

to an estimate by Voice & Data, the total telco solutions market in India

excluding the DoT market was of the order of Rs 192 crore in 1997. The cash-starved

private sector (the private cellular and basic service providers) has gone in for the bare

minimum. As a result, the activity in the first phase has remained restricted only to the

billing and customer care segments, apart from high-end voicemail systems. Among other

solutions that have picked up of late are the pre-paid solutions though only a handful of

operators have finalized the orders.

Traditionally, telco solutions to DoT have

been supplied by a handful of companies like TCIL Bellsouth and CMC. But the opening of

cellular services industry attracted major players in international telco solutions to

India.

Billing was the first area to see major

activities. In the metro round, SEMA Group Telecom of UK emerged as the most successful

billing company, bagging four out of the eight orders. It was followed by LHS of Germany

with two orders. In the circle round, things changed and LHS did better business than

SEMA. Siemens Nixdorf India, a new player, also emerged successful, primarily because of a

big order from one operator, Reliance Telecom, which has licences for as many as seven

circles.

By this time, some Indian companies had

gained considerable experience in systems integration by doing integration for companies

like LHS, Kingston SCL, and CSC Intellicon. Combining the traditional software development

strength of Indians and the acquired skill-set, a few companies like Siemens Information

Systems Ltd (SISL) and UBEST positioned themselves as total solutions providers in billing

while Hyderabad-based Satyam Computers decided to further develop itself as a systems

integrator. Today, these three companies have built good strength in telecom. UBEST needs

special mention. This small Calcutta-based group company of Usha Martin Industries has

established itself as a major player. The company’s first success came in the form of

a small order from Bharti Telenet, the cellular operator for Himachal Pradesh. The company

then looked outwards before claiming two more orders in India—that of Skycell in

Chennai which said goodbye to SEMA’s product and Srinivas Cellcom, the new cellular

licensee for Tamil Nadu.

With the private basic service operators

coming in, some new players have joined them. Among them are TCS which has bagged the

entire contract from Tata Teleservices in Andhra Pradesh and Mahindra BT, which is doing

the systems integration for Hughes Ispat in Maharashtra on behalf of Alltel.

Other areas that have seen some action are

the high-end voicemail market for the cellular operators where Comverse, alongwith its

subsidiary Boston Technology, has the major marketshare. Pre-paid has seen ORGA doing it

for Essar in Delhi, Brite for Hutchison Max in Mumbai, and Centigram for Bharti in Delhi.

Parsec also has done a small project for Bharti Telenet in Madhya Pradesh. This is the

area to watch. More than half a dozen orders could be finalized in pre-paid this year.

The major opportunity in telecom IS this

year will be the ISPs. While small billing solutions for them will be a hot product, many

will also go for enhanced fax service solutions. While pre-paid will continue to do well,

many cellular operators will turn to CT-enabled call centres.