BANGALORE: In the early days the Indian telecom industry was under the State aegis until liberalization. ITI had monopoly on the phone sets. In building telecom gear, we have had a tradition of expanding telecom from the 80's. C-DOT, during Sam Pitroda, built an indigenous telephone central office switch that became the defacto switch for deployment countrywide, and the PCO-boom in the early 90's that lead to telecom really spreading to all parts of the country.

Its over two decades now and Indian telecom Industry has come a long way, says Vishal Sharma, principal consultant of California-based Metanoia Inc., a technology consulting company, focused on the telecom market around the world.

In a conversation with Dheeksha Rabindra from CyberMedia News, Sharma explains the trends, challenges and future of Indian Telecom Industry.

Excerpts:

Where does the Indian telecom industry stand today as compared to the western market?

In terms of deployment of technology and the build out of telecom networks in India, and the adoption of new technologies, India is second only to Korea, Japan, and China. What took Western markets 20-25 years to develop and deploy, India is doing it in 5-10 year. But then, that is the nature of telecom today. It is possible to leapfrog technologies and systems, and to deploy the latest technologies. The Indian operators are certainly doing that.

In terms of developing new technology ourselves, we are way behind the West. We have no notable equipment large indigenous equipment vendors. Contrast this with China, which has several very large equipment vendors who have substantial equipment sales within China, and, now, increasingly, outside of China too.

Also, our technology houses (the likes of Infosys, HCL, TCS, Wipro) have not really started strong telecom practices to influence the Indian telecom industry in any significant way.

If we continue this path, it will be difficult for India to sustain the telecom edge, and it will perpetually be dependent on outside for new technologies, that may not even be designed with the Indian landscape in mind. The robustness with which technology is deployed in India is also lower, and gear needs to be designed to account for this.