India and China are currently the world's fastest growing economies and telecoms development markets. As a result, it is hardly surprising that both countries have become a focus for the world's top telecoms vendors. The speed of CDMA development within India has pleasantly surprised seasoned industry observers. According to a recent report issued by the CDMA Development Group (CDG), India's CDMA net subscriber base is increasing by an average of 2,000,000 new additions monthly. As of mid-2007, the number of subscribers in India had also surged through the 50,000,000 barrier. GSM, on the other hand, took nearly twice as long to achieve similar growth levels. This will mean that India will be the second only to the US in the size of its CDMA market. For this reason, more and more world-class telecoms manufacturers are turning their attention to this most remarkable country.
India is home to two of the world's top 10 CDMA operators - Reliance and TATA. Both selected Huawei as their major partner in the deployment of new CDMA networks in 2006. Huawei subsequently went on to sign two even bigger contracts with Reliance and TATA worth a combined total of almost US$ 300,000,000.
Knocking on India's door
Huawei was one of the first leading international vendors to spot the huge potential of the billion-consumer-strong Indian telecoms market. It was back in 1999 that Huawei first began researching the country and established a software research and development (R&D) center in Bangalore. To date, the Bangalore facility has attracted more than 1,000 outstanding Indian software engineers to join its team. During 2001 and 2003, the Bangalore R&D center passed CMM4 class and CMM5 class respectively. The center's key technological achievements include the design of both the Huawei NGN and Softswitch.
March, 2001, marked the first time Huawei exhibited at an Indian telecoms exhibition. In announcing its arrival in the sub-continent, Huawei demonstrated its pioneering full series of solutions in mobile telecommunications technologies. Specific exhibits on show included GSM, WCDMA, CDMA, Optic transmission network and data communication systems.
While very lucrative, the Indian market remains fiercely competitive with telecoms operators always leveraging low prices to build up their subscriber bases. This has seen ARPU experience a steady year-on-year decline and operators face increased costing pressures. As Huawei's All IP solution and products all offer advanced functions and high performance integration, they will enable Indian operators to make huge savings on network maintenance and upgrades. For this reason, Huawei has created a great deal of interest among the country's telecoms companies.
Said former Chinese Prime minister, Mr. Zhu Rongji, when visiting Bangalore: 'The level of India's software technology is second to none, and the hardware produced in China is easily the most advanced in the world. Just imagine how much our two countries could achieve if we joined forces and cooperated!"
In India, Huawei is already helping to deliver on this promise.
Bona fides create trust
As we've seen, the Indian telecoms industry is developing astonishingly quickly. It has also benefited hugely from its government's policy of openness in this area. Specific initiatives such as the introduction of foreign equity participation, a reduction in bill charges have all helped to stimulate competition within the Indian market.