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With India moving towards ubiquitous broadband connectivity and divide in
the wireless broadband shrinking, WLAN is heading towards a shining future. And
as more technologies become a part of the Wi-Fi space, solution providers can't
afford to not leverage on the opportunity
The rough and tough Indian terrain and the congested city infrastructure is
a blessing for the evolution of wireless broadband. The Indian platform as a
whole is challenging in nature, and it is really difficult to put a wired
infrastructure in place.
Internet service providers (ISPs) are exhausted in their process of passing
the wires among the sky scrappers. It is almost impossible to get clear Line of
Sight (LOS) in many parts. Hence, wireless last mile access and broadband
distribution capabilities over one to five km radius with realistic to extreme
NLOS conditions have become a necessity. After a long time of hype, Wi-Fi has
also finally become a reality and the WLAN market has shown a 40 percent growth
during the last fiscal.
From Rs 150 crore market in 2006-07, today the WLAN stands at Rs 210 crore.
Wi-Fi has played a significant role in the growth of this WLAN market.
As ISPs find it a lucrative service option for increasing their quality of
service (QOS), Wi-Fi is out from the tepid image it had maintained so far. ISP
interest in this technology is clearly visible through their activities in
setting up hotspots in various cities across the country.
Tata Communications has been leading the growth of the Wi-Fi industry in
India and today has the largest Wi-Fi deployment among domestic ISPs with over
500 hotspots. With the government announcement to de-license the 2.4GHz and
5.1GHz bands, on which the Wi-Fi platform works, incumbents like BSNL and MTNL
are looking at this space actively and the adoption is set to grow further.
| One of the key trends that is
expected to take place in future is the merger of Wi-Fi with VoIP |
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Wi-Fi market in India
Almost all the networking vendors are in the Wi-Fi space in India like Cisco,
D-Link, Netgear, Huawei, Pointred, BroVis, Proxim to name a few, where the first
three players control the whole market. India follows the standards set by the
global Wi-Fi alliance and all the products have to be certified by these
standards.
The present standard followed by the Wi-Fi vendors is based on IEEE's 802.11
b, a and g technology which is based on the speed in Mbps and maximum distance
covered. These standards are also adhered to and implemented by the WPC of the
Department of Telecom, Government of India.
Wi-Fi consists of two divisions-consumer and enterprise. The growth rate of
enterprise WLAN as a percentage of overall Wi-Fi revenue is growing rapidly as
compared to consumer Wi-Fi.
“The Enterprise WLAN is expected to grow by over 40 percent and within that
the wireless LAN controller is expected to grow by 60 percent in units and
revenue. Enterprises have developed business critical mobility applications and
are deploying WLAN controller-based enterprise WLAN to ensure security,
manageability, scalability and Quality of Service,” said Jayant Rastogi,
Country Manager-India, Enterprise Mobility Business, Motorola.
Muthu Logan, CEO and Founder, BroVis Wireless Networks felt that the Wi-Fi
adoption has picked up in a major way and within a short span, BroVis has done
numerous deployments in different verticals. “We at BroVis have deployed over
1,000 installations in a short span of time. We are seeing extremely good
adoption of broadband wireless in urban and rural areas, particularly in
enterprises, colleges, hospitality segment, service provider backhaul, and last
mile broadband distribution areas to name a few.”
Growth drivers
Mobility is the key factor that is driving the growth of Wi-Fi adoption in
India and the strong proving fact is the increasing consumption of laptops among
the customers. “Mobility, convenience and the thrust to adopt to newer and
emerging technology are driving the enterprises to go for Wi-Fi solutions,” said
Kandarp Jhala, AVP-Channels, D-Link India. The other factors that are driving
the demand for Wi-Fi are the ability to work in the unlicensed spectrum and
secondly the excellent role-played by standards' body in certifying
interoperability.
Upcoming technologies
In Wi-Fi, the key emerging technology is smart multiple-input multiple-output
(MIMO), which provides high throughput and non-interfering wireless access for
multimedia applications like IPTV. Also, voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) and
convergence services are catching on. Presently the advanced security, traffic
management and subscriber management features are being added to existing Wi-Fi
solutions.
Paramjit Singh Puri, Business Development Manager-Advanced Technologies,
Cisco Systems, India & SAARC felt said that people are realizing the benefits of
pervasive wireless network that allows Quad play services and offers more mobile
applications for consumer benefit.
According to him, this will allow the introduction of new products in the
Wi-Fi space. “A glowing example is the introduction of the latest 802.11n, 2.0
Draft version of Wi-Fi Alliance certified AP's from Cisco, which was the first
company in the world to launch the 'n' platform that allows the speeds up to
300Mbps over the MIMO technology. Cisco has been working very closely with Intel
to ensure full compatibility with all the new laptops to be fitted by the new
Wi-Fi chip from Intel and all would be 'n' enabled,” he informed.
Sethumadhavan, Deputy Director-Marketing, Huawei India echoing the same
thoughts said that 802.11n builds upon the previous 802.11 standards by adding
MIMO technology, which uses multiple transmitter and receiver antennas that
increases the data throughput through spatial multiplexing and increases the
range by exploiting the spatial diversity. “With the proposed changes, the data
throughput is estimated to reach 540MB/s requiring an even higher raw data rate
at the physical layer. The spectrum of operation will remain 2.4GHz or 5GHz. The
powerful smart antenna technology will in fact double the range offered by
currently available Wi-Fi equipments,” he informed.
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One of the key technologies that is expected to take place in the future is
the merger of Wi-Fi with VoIP. VoWi-Fi is the Wi-Fi-based VoIP service or
wireless VoIP system, whereas VoIP consists of the hardware and software that
enables people to use the Internet as a transmission medium to make calls.
VoWiFi is the wireless version of this technology that is designed to work on
wireless devices such as a laptops or PDAs.
Jayant Rastogi, Country Manager, Motorola felt that three major disruptions
would change the way conventional enterprise networks are designed today and
thereby pave way for the 'Wireless Enterprise'. “The ratification of the 802.11n
standard, expected in early 2009, will primarily pave the way to enhance access
speeds 2x-3x times current 802.11g access speeds. Next the distributed 802.11n
indoor mesh wireless deployments will be deployed at the network distribution
and access layer inside enterprises and finally, the morphing of WLAN controller
to be a single point management platform for Wi-Fi, UHF RFID and other wireless
networks co-existing in the same enterprise, coupled with open APIs, will enable
rapid mobility application development,” informed Rastogi.
.More roles for SIs
Predominantly, the system integrators (SIs) deploy access points in the area
for the Wi-Fi network and look after the entire pre and post sales operations.
“SIs play a key role in assessing requirements, doing site survey and deploying
solutions based on our products/solutions/deployment guidelines. They also
integrate the wireless infrastructure with other systems like fiber backhaul,
routers, billing systems, OSS/BSS etc,” claimed Logan of BroVis Networks.
According to N Hari, VP-Technology, Point Red Communications, “When a SI
offers the Wi-Fi solutions to his customer, it means that he is providing a
total bouquet of solutions, as the Wi-Fi solution would contain lots of backhaul
connections. And he must try to provide the complete solution by himself, as
there would be a gap if more than one SI works for the single project. So he
must have good knowledge of the wireless space as well as the integration space
for providing the total solution to the customers.” He also said that before
deploying the solution, the SI must clearly understand the requirements of the
customer. “Certain solutions must be tailor-made. Only after understanding the
requirements of the customer the SI can judge that. The most important thing an
SI must do in the deployment is identifying the bandwidth and access points
required by the customer,” Hari informed. “Post deployment, there is a need of
constant monitoring and management in the network. So the SI can offer Network
Management System (NMS) for his clients. SIs can also provide future solutions,
wherein if the network traffic increases in one particular area, based on that
they can provide necessary access points,” Hari averred.
Challenges
There are also some typical challenges faced by SIs while deploying Wi-Fi
solutions in India. “Sustainability issues, difficult terrain, lack of adequate
power backup, failed public private partnerships in the past, high cost of PCs
and laptops, lack of initiative by government and bureaucratic delays are some
of the challenges faced by the channels,” informed Sethumadhavan of Huawei.
Kandarp Jhala, AVP-Channels, D-Link India felt that understanding the needs of
the customers during survey is also one of the key challenges faced by the SIs,
as determining the bandwidth needs more logical work. However, by and large, all
these will be overcome in the future once the solution get enhanced along with
the offerings.
Future
Over the next few years, we will see emergence of new digital society in
India with ubiquitous broadband connectivity. India will witness a surge of
Wi-Fi end points over the next few years, driving demand for wireless points of
presence. A phenomenal 100 percent rise in laptop consumption over the last year
is an indication of how things are going to shape up in future. Also in the
future, Wi-Fi and WiMax are expected to co-exist and compliment each other, with
pre- WiMax, fixed WiMax playing a significant role in last mile wireless,
backhaul and cable replacement functionality, and Wi-Fi providing omnipresent
low-cost network access to mobile laptop/smart phone users. The emerging
technologies in the Wi-Fi space clearly show that the future is going to be
wireless broadband. SIs would have more roles to play post deployment of Wi-Fi
solutions. The only question is that how soon our SIs are going to capitalize
the opportunity lying before them?
NR SETHURAMAN
(Sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in) Page(s) 1
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