Global telecom equipment firms to up India funds

India is fast becoming the favorite destination for global telecom equipment makers.

Leading firms such as Lucent Technologies, Tellabs, Tekelec, Avaya, Cisco and Juniper, are vying to carve out a bigger share from the $7 billion investments that Indian telecom service providers are going to make in the next 12 to 18 months.

Most of these equipment makers are raising their investments and operations in India. "India is one of the fastest growing telecom markets. The only other comparable market is China," said John T Cole, vice-president and managing director (Asia-Pacific), Tellabs.

Moreover, with the US and European telecom services companies not making new investments and growth there being slowing down, Asia is becoming an important market for these equipment makers.

The reasons for this sudden upswing are: huge investments put in the pipeline by new service providers, growth in subscriber base and also the fresh investments to be made by the existing players to upgrade the networks.

Vincent J Mazzola, president and chief executive officer, Lucent Technologies, believes that India would be the key market for most of the global telecom equipment makers.

"With other markets around the world not showing signs of great growth, Asian region, particularly India, is the most important market," Mazzola said.

The global majors are investing heavily in sales and marketing, after-sales support, and technology development.

For example, Tekelec, one of the latest entrants in the Indian market, is setting up a huge marketing base in India, besides establishing an engineering and sales support team.

In addition, it is also expanding its software outsourcing operations here. According to Lucent's Mazzola, the big potential in the Indian market is driving the equipment makers to set up development centres.

"Companies want product development to be near their best markets. This is one reason why most of the telecom vendors have development centres here. This will help them in having a great synergy between the demand and development," he says.

Avaya, for example, is expanding its software development operations in Pune. The company has recently opened another centre in Pune and plans to expand it in the near future.

Ravi Sethi, president, Avaya Labs, said the company sees India as one of the emerging markets and would make considerable investments here.