Corporate India Spent 19 Percent More On ICT In FY'09: Survey

Corporate India spent 27 percent more on telecom in 2008-09 as compared to the previous year, according to the 3rd Enterprise Communications Priorities ‘09 survey. Last year, the telecom spend had grown by 22.3 percent.

A nationwide survey among a cross section of 200 companies by technology intelligence firm, IDC India, for telecom monthly Voice&Data found that corporate India spent 19 percent more on information technology, communications and technology (ICT) as compared to the previous year. The growth in IT spend was at 17 percent. The average spend of enterprises on broadband services dipped by 5 percent.

About 19 percent of the participating enterprises had Tata Communications as the primary communications provider, followed by 18 percent using services of MTNL and Airtel. About 16 percent of the respondents used BSNL and 14 percent were Reliance customers. The rest of the pie is shared by players like Aircel, Tulip and Sify.

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3G & WiMax

The survey points out that only one in 10 respondents (from manufacturing, BFSI and IT sector) plan to adopt WiMax and 3G in the next two years. The existing users of WiMax services are from the IT/ ITeS segment.

“The IDC-Voice&Data survey shows that it is early to adopt 3G and WiMax in Indian enterprises. Private operators would take nearly a year to start offering the services in India. Most CTOs and CIOs expressed concern on the cost of services and the effectiveness of enterprise applications on 3G and WiMax platforms,” says Ibrahim Ahmad, Group Editor, Cybermedia.

The reason for low interest in 3G and WiMax technology range from heavy investment needed to procure 3G and WiMax-enabled devices and products to low requirement for large bandwidth.

Only two percent of the enterprises plan to go in for 3G services in the next one year. Enterprises in the retail segment have no plans to adopt 3G technology over the next two years.

Enterprise Satisfaction Up

Enterprises were more satisfied with service providers in FY’09 with the overall satisfaction level increasing to 89.4 percent from 82 percent in FY’08. Tata Communications topped the enterprise communications satisfaction level ousting last year’s topper—MTNL—to the second spot. Airtel was at No 3 and Reliance Communications at No 4. BSNL was at No 5.

ICT Challenges faced by Enterprises

The survey measured enterprise communications satisfaction of enterprises in manufacturing, BFSI, IT/ ITeS and Retail in eight Indian cities to identify the challenges faced by individual organisations and sectors.

Lack of after-sales remains the key challenge for enterprises, followed by shortage of trained manpower and low reliability of the network. Management of network and scalability of technology were the other inhibitors.

The survey reveals that BSNL needs to improve service outage, time taken to resolve issues, incidence of trouble and overall billing integrity. MTNL needs to focus on the knowledge and skills of the account support team, service outage, network design suggested by the service provider and time taken to resolve issues. Airtel needs to work on the functional and technical capabilities and overall cost of the service.

Tata Communications would need to focus on meeting customer needs and lowering the cost of service. Reliance needs to address the issues of network design, meeting customer needs and reducing overall cost of the service.

Nearly one-third of the enterprises had a turnover of over Rs 1000 crore, two-thirds reported turnover in the range of Rs 200 to Rs 999 crore. A handful of them had turnover of less than Rs 200 crore.