V&D100, 2013:Transmission- Moving Up

India has around 120 mn online population and this is bound to grow to 330 mn by 2015. In terms of smartphones, India will be the third largest market by 2016. The cloud computing market in India is planned to reach $16 bn by 2020.

All this depicts that there would be significant bandwidth demand from 3G, 4G, and cloud computing technologies. Operators found themselves with enough capacity to respond to demand, as the new licensed operators stopped leasing bandwidth. So, operators focused on increasing network utilization. Service providers are facing significant bandwidth shortage at all levels (metro and long distance) and are increasing their capacities to meet unprecedented demand.

The transmission segment has done well compared to other carrier equipment segments. Though, it shrunk drastically in FY2011-12 but picked up in FY2012-13, thanks to growth in 3G and data services.

The revenue share of data services as a percentage of total revenues has also increased in FY2012-13 and the trend is expected to continue through FY2013-14 as the next phase of telecom growth is expected to be driven by broadband and data services. Transmission is one of the key segments in carrier equipment space and focuses on SDH, DWDM, GPON,Carrier Ethernet, 40G, 100G, and others.

Transmission remains a strong forte for Alcatel Lucent. The company retains its transmission footprints with major operators and also expanded with another top operator whose network in turn is used by many other operators for its 3G expansions.

A significant win with top two customers for their regional backbone expansion, driven by 3G data increase. The company has bagged 100G deal from RJIL and Tata Communications. It bagged core access fiber for two cities, GPON deal for two cities and OFC connectivity for 7,000 base stations for Reliance Jio Infocomm. The company has also supplied SDH equipment for a greenfield metro project.

Huawei has maintained a leadership position in the DWDM market with the deployment of India's first 100G commercial network. The company has bagged 100G deal from Idea and Vodafone. The

company has also bagged key IP radio and CEN deals for seven circles of Bharti Airtel (8,000 hops) and IP radio deals for 11 circles of Vodafone (9,000 hops).

The company has bagged DWDM deals from Idea and Vodafone and does pan India deal for Bharti, Vodafone, Idea, and Tata Teleservices. Also the company secured Aircel DWDM expansion deal.

Ciena has a successful track record in Carrier Ethernet and 100G space. Ciena has secured some significant 100G wins over the past year and expects the momentum will continue as carriers respond to increasing demands for bandwidth. Infinera sees great opportunities in helping Indian operators deploy scalable, simple, and efficient optical networks for longhaul and subsea applications.

The company is not focusing on declining markets like SDH and 40G but on rapidly growing markets like 100G DWDM. 100G is gaining a lot of traction in India with Infinera's Intelligent Transport Network architecture.

Infinera has entered the 100G longhaul market with a highly differentiated product offering and is well positioned to take advantage of the market conditions. The company has bagged 100G NLD deal

from Reliance Jio Infocomm. In FY 2012- 13, ECI Telecom has continued doing business with most of their customers, but at a slower rate.

Tejas has won almost all government/ PSU tenders in the optical transmission category that were finalized in FY12-13.

In addition Tejas has continued to expand its existing customer base which consists of all the leading private telecom service providers for their network expansions in India, led by large data demand. It has also won several new customers internationally in FY12-13 in Saarc countries, south East Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Tejas has continued to get significant business across many circles from major operators like Bharti Airtel. Railtel, and PGCIL are two long distance operators who came out with new tenders for expansion of their NLD network in India. Many other operators also invested in their NLD networks in areas where they were running out of capacity.

Tejas has continued to be strong in the Enterprise Ethernet services segment apart from 3G, powered by our PTN technology. Tejas won several PTN orders in India and internationally with customers who are aggressively rolling out and expanding new data services.

 

Industry Trends

Emerging services like cloud services, video-intensive applications, and mobile broadband drive bandwidth in the country. Service providers seek opportunities to generate revenue from these emerging services while at the same driving down service delivery cost so operators are moving to 100G and 100G+ to meet their demand.

Service providers are introducing new services at multiple layers on a single converged platform with packet and OTN switching capabilities combined with dynamic control plane and simplified management, in order to realize the untapped potential of their optical networks and accelerate time to revenue. We are also a seeing a shift from TDM microwave radios to IP microwave based radios.

Future

The transmission market is predicted to witness a good growth in FY2013-14 as all LTE players are firming up their launch schedules. On the other hand, the government has announced the NOFN (national optical fiber network) project with the objective of providing high speed broadband connectivity to over 2.5 lakh gram panchayats across the country. Both these infrastructure will provide high speed broadband services and require a backhaul infrastructure that can scale up to meet the increased bandwidth requirements.