coorg@dad.bgsu.edu (Giridhar Coorg) (11/11/89)
This information is as of January 89. There has been a tremendous improvement in the quality of telecom services in India. Till 1984, EPABX's were not manufactured in India. The Indian govt. decided to throw open the manufacture of EPABX's to the private sector industry. Tenders were floated and for some reason the technologies chosen were: GTE-ATEA of Belgium Jeumont Schneider of France Oki of Japan. These are definitely not the best of technologies. These were chosen possibly due to reasons known to the Indian govt. Probably at that time the big time players of the telecom game were too busy with the testing of their new systems to respond to the tender or their terms for technology transfer were too rigid or they did not want to part with their latest technology. Anyways, these are the three technologies which will be present in India. Simultaneously, a body called CDOT (Center for Development of Telematics) was set up under the leadership of Sam Pitroda (former switching & transmission design engineer at GTE with a lot of patents to his name and former owner of a company sold to Rockwell International) with the goal of creating a rural network to work in adverse conditions. The time span was 3 yrs and a budget of Rs. 360 million. Within the time span and well within the budget, this goal was achieved. C language was chosen as the programming language and the hardware incorporates the latest in semiconductor advances. As an by-product, a 128 port (TDM-PCM ofcourse!) EPABX with all facilities was brought out to compete against the manufacturer's with foreign technology. 48 manufacturers all over the country signed up to actively promote this product with CDOT providing all the necessary technical back-up. This scheme has been very successful. The CO system is also functional and is helping to remove bottlenecks in communication. The 128 port system has had a chance to participate in international telecom exhibitions and has won wide acclaim from people all over the world. So beware AT&T and other big names!! Watch out for the system from India!!!! To meet the short term needs of the country, 27-30 Alcatel (of France) E-10B digital exchanges have been installed. For e.g, in a city like Madras where the total number of telephone lines are 140,000, there are 30,000 digital lines and another 30,000 on electronic exchanges (analog). The rest are a mix of cross-bar and strowger exchanges. There are factories set up to manufacture these exchanges. To meet the access to STD (subscriber trunk dialling) or long distance dialling demand, MAX (main automatic exchanges) were also in the scope of design of CDOT. These are also working successfully. The MAX'S are being progressively being changed to digital. On the subscriber equipment side, for telephones, three technologies were chosen. They were Siemens of West Germany, Ericsson of Sweden and Face of Italy (I don't know if I got the spelling right for the last one!). So a user could hook up any of the three types of approved instruments. Of course, there are a lot of fancy gadgets similar to the ones available in the US which have been connected by the users themselves. The P&T (Post & Telegraph) which is responsible for the telecom services in India, assumes responsibility for data transfer rates upto 1200 bauds although rates of up to 9600 bauds have been measured to pass peacefully. The network is still primarily analog but switching fast to digital. 30-channel PCM links to subsriber ( as a first step towards ISDN) are being offered to subscribers on a limited basis. Satellite transmission is used by some organisations and also networking of various offices (for e.g State Bank of India net) is in vogue. FAX machines are pretty common although in offices, most of which are imported from Japan or elsewhere. Manufacturing of fax machines will start pretty soon with technology transfer. Other office automation equipment available are Copiers (eg Xerox), electronic typewriters, electronic telexes etc. etc. You name it, India has it. Such has been the rapid development of telecom services in India that any global telecom manufacturer cannot afford to neglect the market potential in India. Also, the competition from India for a niche in the telecom market is expected to be very intense. Item-wise billing is available in India on demand to those subscribers connected to electronic exchanges (either analog or digital). It works on battery reversal principle. Also the exchanges which have been installed are capable of working on pulses. A massive computer and software has been set up by a local manufacturer with collaboration with Bull to take care of billing software. The battery reversal principle has been quite reliable and not many disputes have been known to occur on the bills. Now, the metering of calls can be done at the PBX level also by keeping track of the first battery reversal which takes place when the called party lifts up the receiver. Subsequently, the duration of the call is calculated by noting the time of disconnection of the call by the user on the PBX. This information is fed to a billing system consisting of a computer to calculate the charges for the calls. In fact, the star hotels (luxury type) have this sort of an set up to give the guest a detailed billing of all calls.