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Monday, March 26, 2007
Pravin Prashant
India has crossed the 200 mn telephone mark and is presently number one in the world in terms of net mobile additions. The country is adding around 6-7 mn subscribers every month. India has also surpassed China's net additions pegged at around 5-6 mn in Q4 2006. And this addition is expected to continue for at least a couple of years as we are still at a tele-density of 19. However, the full potential is not yet realized in urban as well as rural areas, as we have covered only 50-55% of India's geography.
The growth in mobile additions is astounding, but we are way below the quality benchmarks laid by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), which is at 95% for network availability. The recent VOICE & DATA Mobile Users' Satisfaction Survey 2006 shows that there has been a large-scale drop in the satisfaction of subscribers of most service providers. It seems the operators have not been able to devote time and effort to increase the satisfaction level. The scenario remains same across different circles-irrespective of operators. The latest survey also shows that there has been quality of service (QoS) deterioration in metros whereas there are signs of improvement in A circle. In B and C circles, only one operator has shown signs of improvement.
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| Experts panel |
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Shankar Roychowdhury, general manager (marketing), Electronic Measurement Group, Agilent Technologies India
Yatish Mohan, MD and head, T&M, Rhode and Schwarz India
Yogesh Sundaramurthy, area sales manager, National Instruments India
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Challenges
The challenge before service provider is to offer new and unique services to a large audience and in turn generate more revenue. Another challenge is how does one take care of new technologies in terms of deployment in different geographies, while utilizing the old technologies optimally. Apart from this, the focus is on continuous scaling and optimization of the network to guarantee a minimum threshold in terms of quality of service for existing services as well as new upcoming technologies.
With PLC (product life cycle) decreasing, the biggest challenge for CTO's is reduced time to market product/solutions. And with increased competition and in this fast changing technology world, telecom players are under pressure to come up with new products in the shortest possible time and also at a lowered cost.
On the manufacturing front, there is a wide gap between India's mobile intake and production. Presently, we are only manufacturing 15%-20% of the total requirement and it is still a long way to go, as one has to talk about exports if we plan to ramp up manufacturing in the country. There have been a lot of announcements by different vendors, but one has to see an increase in production statistics of all the vendors plus EMS players in the country. Presently, the focus is more on low cost handsets and assembly of handsets. Even on the infrastructure front, it is more of assembly rather than doing full-fledged manufacturing. Once we start manufacturing components in India, we will realize the real potential to export mid quality handsets plus BTS.
The biggest challenge is the product time-to-market. Increased competition and fast changing technologies mean that telecom players are under pressure to come up with new products in the shortest possible time. Adding to that is consumer demand for lowering costs at the same time as improving technology. Product testing is an integrated part of its life cycle and hence T&M has to cater to this demand. T&M is generally considered to be the 'necessary evil' in product development-everyone wants to do away with it, but no one can live without it.
| Agilent Unveils World's First Integrated Mobile WiMax Test Set |
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Agilent Technologies has introduced the Agilent E6651A Mobile WiMax Test Set for designers and manufacturers to accelerate time-to-market for their IEEE802.16e subscriber products. Created in conjunction with Innowireless, this breakthrough product is the first in an ongoing collaborative effort that combines the engineering leadership of both companies.
The E6651A Mobile WiMax Test Set will allow WiMax subscriber station designers and manufacturers to rapidly move from development to volume production, and to improve the integrity and quality of their products while reducing cost. The E6651A complements Agilent leading WiMax solutions for signal analyzers, signal generators and EDA software.
The Agilent E6651A incorporates a full suite of RF measurements for characterization, calibration and verification purposes. The mobile WiMax test set can be extended to allow engineers to test, stress and debug IP data handling capabilities of their designs in a controlled laboratory environment.
The E6651A represents a significant breakthrough in mobile WiMax testing, with the flexibility to configure a wide range of network parameters through an easy-to-use Windows XP user interface, and high-speed, precision-accuracy measurements. It incorporates flexible base station emulation and parametric tests into one integrated unit and extends Agilent's unmatched portfolio of WiMax test solution for R&D, verification and manufacturing customers.
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Presently, the manufacturers are focusing on low cost phones, but they are not focusing on quality, as less number of tests is performed so that one can optimize on the cost part.
In terms of investment in T&M with respect to total investment, worldwide ratios are still on a higher side. Indian operators are still at one percent whereas internationally it is around two-three percent. An increase in percentage point has direct relevance to the quality of mobile network in a country.
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For improving quality, one can use equipments like interference elimination, network optimization and testers |
Solutions
T&M players have an advantage as they always work at the leading edge right from the time the product hits the lab for testing. Even when the product is being manufactured, T&M is used for calibration and quality control. And on the maintenance side, T&M is used mainly for rectification of error. T&M products are also used for network deployment. So, T&M players focus on validating, testing, deployment and optimization. T&M plays a critical role right from early design stages to end-of-line manufacturing, as there is a need to enhance productivity and also increase the quality of product.
The T&M players provide flexible and reconfigurable automation tools helping in reusability of hardware, flexibility and customizability for different test sets. Combining these benefits helps in reducing cost and keeps a check on quality. With handheld testers, the service providers and manufacturers get increased productivity whereas one box tester helps in further improvement in throughput and bringing down the cost of tests. Handhelds helps in bringing down the costs of the tests and the time.
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| Upgrdation and network optimization can help in accommodation of more people in the cell and more traffic within a particular cell site |
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Rohde and Schwarz adds HSUPA functionality to its R&S CRTU-W
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The R&S CRTU-W has been upgraded to include high-speed uplink packet access (HSUPA) in addition to its extensive high-speed download packet access (HSDPA) functionality featuring a wide range of test scenarios and conformance test cases. Rohde and Schwarz offers HSUPA tree and tabular combined notation (TTCN) test cases from GCF Work Items 24 and 25 for conformance tests on HSUPA-compatible mobile phones. With an initial package of scenarios for its medium-level C++ programming interface (MLAPI), the company also meets the requirements in the development of HSPA user equipment.
The HSUPA test cases, which are specified in TTCN, cover a wide variety of signaling scenarios to verify the standard-compliant functioning of the various protocol layers. Developing user-specific test scenarios, however, requires a substantially more flexible programming environment. The medium-level C++ programming interface (MLAPI) from Rohde and Schwarz expands the R&S CRTU-W protocol tester specifically to meet the requirements of development labs. For the MLAPI, Rohde and Schwarz already offers extensive test scenarios for WCDMA (Release 99) and HSDPA (Release 5). With its initial package of HSUPA scenarios (Release 6), Rohde and Schwarz supports users who have to generate test scripts covering also the new requirements in the shortest possible time.
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For improving quality, one can use equipments like interference elimination, network optimization and testers. So, complete suites of products for improving quality are: spectrum analyzers, signal generators, and power meters and all these help in calibration as well as quality control. Drive test solutions and base station test tools help in optimization and proper coverage planning of wireless networks deploying different technologies. In fact, there is a vast range of radio frequency/microwave/general purpose tools that can help operators to improve QoS. At the top, OSS solutions offer great insight into network quality and help in trouble-shooting at the highest level.
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