“We missed the first GSM wave, but are very bullish now”

Alcatel has been one of the early players to come to India, and has seen the Indian telecom industry through its journey of growth. The company, which has so far maintained a relatively low profile, now plans to get more aggressive, says Ravi Sharma, MD, Alcatel India:

How do you perceive the current Indian market in terms of business opportunities? 

The overall market outlook for telecom equipment and services is bullish. However, it is difficult to say which sectors will witness maximum growth, as these are transition times.

I feel that both the wireless and wireline segments will grow differently from application to application and region to region. Whereas the voice traffic in urban areas will shift towards wireless, data traffic will grow leaps and bounds and would primarily be carried on wireline. In semi urban and rural areas, the fixed line telephony will grow much faster than wireless.

The reach of the Internet will definitely grow and a lot of broadband deployments are expected.

Other business opportunities will be in DSL and ADSL, TDM-based EPABXs and IP EPABXs, and VSATs. Further, operators will fine it necessary to deploy Intelligent Networks (IN) platforms in India.

What are your plans for developing Alcatel’s business in India? 

Our market priorities will be fixed broadband, multimedia mobile and solutions for the enterprise segment. We shall continue our focus in the area of intelligent networks and will soon deploy IN platforms for some Indian operators. 

We shall focus on infrastructure projects and will try to replicate our success of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation by establishing ourselves as end-to-end turnkey system providers. 

We shall also be looking at bringing in the latest broadband technologies based on DSL and ADSL technologies. We will also focus on the GSM segment.

Alcatel has been almost invisible in the wireless business. Why?

We missed the first wave of GSM in India due to a partnership that did not go the right way. Now we are very bullish in this segment and would be targeting the private and public operators as they go in for expansion with substantial increase in subscribers. Alcatel is a preferred GSM supplier to the green field operators across the world and is in No1 position in this segment today. 

You are planning to get into the cellular business now by retailing handsets. How do you plan to go about this?

Alcatel is the No. 5 cell phone supplier in the world and we manufacture 12 to 14 million phones every year and now we have started looking at India in a very focused manner. By introducing new features that would enable operators to deliver a host of value-added services, we are confident that we will be successful.  

We plan to distribute our phones through distributors. Also, we are working with some operators to look for options of bundling to penetrate the market. I am sure that we will have very good visibility and market share soon.

Aren’t you a bit late in this business given the fact that the market for handsets is so crowded now? 

Till last year there was a huge gray market in India and it was difficult to assess the organized segment. Also, the growth itself was not very high. Now things have changed and the figures have reversed with 80 percent phones available in the organized sector.  We feel that this is the right time to enter the market when volumes are picking up. Therefore our late entry into the market is well justified, as now it is financially viable to introduce the latest cell phones in the market. With our aggressive strategy in place, we would be able to make strong inroads in the Indian market.

Won't it be difficult to compete on price alone?

Yes, it is a difficult proposition to compete on price alone as quality and features also play an important role. With so many players in the market vying for a piece of their own share it is important that customers get the best value for money. Therefore we shall be bundling many advanced features in our cell phones at very competitive prices to get a fair share of the market.

With so much focus on the mobile communication seen in India and elsewhere, will the fixed communications suffer? 

I do not agree with this. The fixed line deployment will also continue to grow, albeit at a lesser rate as compared to previous years. There is no doubt that the wireless annual growth has over taken the fixed, especially in urban areas due to the freedom it is able to provide to the users for voice and low speed data services. But the requirement for bandwidth intensive data traffic is bound to grow in an exponential manner, and the best-suited medium for handling high bandwidth data economically, still is wireline. Hence, I feel the fixed line segment will also continue to grow.

Ibrahim Ahmad