'India is taking a leadership position on TD-LTE, which will further drive development of T&M;'

How has your experience been
in India?

I don't think that I could have chosen a better time to move to India. The mobile communications industry is going through a change and although there are ups and downs, the general trend is looking very positive. The work environment is very motivating because of the optimistic approach in the industry. We have been very fortunate to recruit some talented individuals to help drive the initial growth of the business and they will play an important role in the growth of Aeroflex in India.

What are the products and solutions for the Indian market?

Aeroflex's LTE products are poised to aid India's LTE network launches. Aeroflex's TM500 test mobile and 7100 LTE UE tester are well established in India as critical enablers for LTE eNodeB, chipset, UE, and application development. On top of that, we have added general purpose RF signal generators and analyzers: S-Series 3 GHz and 6 GHz digital RF signal generators, and 6 GHz and 13 GHz vector signal analyzers.

How has Aeroflex's entry in the signal analyzers market added to the T&M portfolio of the company?

With operators showing their preference for LTE-TDD while rolling out BWA services, T&M vendors are gearing up to come out with suitable solutions for catering to this future demand. From a testing standpoint, this implies more complex real-world testing. To meet the growing demands from the operators, the vendors are gearing up to extend their existing HSPA portfolio to support HSPA+ and LTE frequency division duplex (FDD) and (TDD).

T&M has become a crucial part in the service-delivery mechanism of operators and there are challenges that the industry is facing. Please explain...

Aeroflex focuses on the needs of equipment and handset vendors. Ensuring that these products are well designed and tested for real-world conditions, such as those mentioned above, is an important element for ensuring quality of service. One area where Aeroflex has been involved in supporting operators is through the use of our TM500 test mobiles for benchmarking and feature testing during pre-deployment trials. As the de facto reference mobile, the TM500 provides a consistent and early-to-market test mobile that is used for testing
new features.

What are the growth opportunities for the industry?

The Indian IT and telecommunications R&D sectors are continuing to go from strength to strength, with multinational companies outsourcing ever increasing amounts of value added work to their Indian subsidiaries and partners. India is also taking a leadership position on TD-LTE and that will further drive development of the industry. Both these trends will benefit companies with a strong R&D test equipment portfolio.