Kim Young-daepresident of Tescom

If one is asked to name a homegrown venture firm that has made its mark, Tescom Co., Ltd. can be cited as one that has distinguished itself in the field of wireless communications testing. Tescom, a typical high-tech venture company for whom researchers account for more than forty percent of its total workforce, specializes in the production of wireless communication equipment testers that are supplied to manufacturers of wireless telecom products such as cell phones, wireless LANs and Bluetooth. During the early years of the company's history, Tescom received favorable responses from its customers through its timely supply of pager testers, a niche market the company had an interest in, and where such major players as Agilent Technologies, Rhode & Schwartz, Anritsu had not ventured. Since then, Tescom has secured a marketing base with the development of radio wave shelters that are prerequisites for the production of cell phones. In addition, Tescom holds core technologies in the testing of Bluetooth, EMC, WLAN and mobile phones through unsparing investment in new R&D projects. After one-and-a-half years of developmental work, Tescom introduced its TC-2300A DAB/DMB tester in order to advance into the terrestrial DMB market this year. The TC-230A DAB/DMB is basically an integrated testing system that features all the functions of a terrestrial DMB protocol "Eureka-147" encoder, RF up-converter and audio analyzer. Until now, encoders, which generate digital signals in line with a protocol, and RF up-converters, which send signals from an encoder, have been sold on the terrestrial DMB testing market as separate items. However, Tescom became the first company to introduce a tester featuring a built-in encoder and converter, plus an audio testing function. The company maintains that for the control of those products already on the market, they must be connected to a separate PC containing specialized application programs. In contrast, the TC-2300A is designed to execute every function possible through Graphical User Interface (GUI). As a result, all testing can be conducted through a single piece of equipment sold at a cheaper price than those already available on the market. The TC-2300A DAB/DMB Tester supports the Eureka-147 system that is presently used as a terrestrial DMB standard in Korea and Europe. It can also freely change all parameters with related protocols. Moreover, as it can send broadcasting signals directly to terminals without having to go through exterior RF up converters, the system is structured simply to enable testing to be done in a speedy and precise manner. The company states that this is the most outstand feature of the tester. Moreover, the TC-2300A provides a high-speed data port for the reception of MPEG-4 and H.264 data in addition to PC application data. It can also store streaming data for testing purpose as it has a 256M-byte built-in memory chip. Tescom plans to market the tester in February this year after field tests involving the formation of a total solution achieved through co-opting wave shield devices such as the TC-5060A/B UHF TEM Cell and TC-5952B Shield Box. Tescom has already added functions to the TC-2300A so that it can test not only DAB but also DMB equipment and has begun marketing the product ahead of its actual appearance on the market. As imported competing products are expensive and must be bought separately, Tescom has integrated all necessary functions into a single, reasonably priced piece of equipment with convenient GUI functions. Tescom, whose goal is to take a fifty-percent share of the tester market at home and abroad, attracted a great deal of interest during a recent DMB-related exhibition and has already received orders ahead of its market debut.