CPE Business in India to grow fast

Customer Premises Equipments (CPEs) are the electronic devices which reside at customer premises and connect to the operator’s network to deliver services to its subscribers. CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) is evolving day by day from the vision and belief that every networking enterprise shares "The Network is the Business" and this is actually what the world runs on. We believe that the product is the interface across the enterprise. “Thus, with this methodology (which is now being patented so that we have exclusivity), we are able to create a true 360-degree, scalable and flexible environment with digital foundations,” says Ravians Kumar, Sales Director, India, Edimax.

The total market for CPE business in India is estimated to be around 8 million. Out of these, UTStarcom has supplied 2.8 million CPEs,” says Vijay Yadav, Managing Director – South Asia, UTStarcom. UTStarcom in India is working with all the major telcos, including BSNL, MTNL, Reliance, Bharti and Tata.

“We see the WLAN equipment market to be around US$75 million in 2008. Today, we are seeing a sudden upturn in WLAN acceptance. With more and more enhanced technologies being introduced, running on 11g and 11n, enterprise customers are clearly able to see the benefits of having WLAN,” says Sudarshan Boosupalli, Country Head, Ruckus Wireless.

Ruckus Wireless is a plug-and-play indoor wireless solution that brings reliability, manageability, security which seems to be hugely accepted by its users. Ruckus Wireless is an accepted, reliable, secure and a manageable cost-effective Wi-Fi connectivity for both indoors and outdoors.

“Our strategy is to solve the problem of cost, complexity and reliability. Ruckus Wireless WLAN solutions provide 100 per cent of the feature/functionality of high-end WLAN systems at 50 per cent of the cost. This is ideal for the bulk of the enterprise market – across all verticals – where budgets and IT resources are constricting,” says Sudarshan Boosupalli.

We also focus on verticals where Ethernet cabling is an issue – such as hotels, schools and hospitals. Ruckus uniquely provides an adaptive meshing capability that allows access points to be deployed without having to run Category 5 Ethernet cabling,” adds Sudarshan Boosupalli.

Ruckus has announced its latest ZoneFlex wireless LAN router (7962) which would be available in India from April 2009. This has dual wireless radio both of 11n (competitor has dual radio too but one 11n and the other 11G) and throughput of which is 170–180 Kbps – three times more than its next competitor.

UTStarcom CPEs comply with all applicable standards and are fully-equipped with all required technical features, as prescribed in the Generic Requirements (GRs) outlined by the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC), Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India, including interface requirements, line interface, telephone interface, data interface, ATM attributes and functionalities, firewall features, quality of service, diagnostics and visual status indicators, management features and functionalities, other requirements including qualitative requirements, electromagnetic compatibility and safety requirements.

The TR-069 specification ensures that the CPE can be easily configured, activated and managed from a console in the network, helping service providers to effectively address the costs of deployment and support of their CPE as well as tightly manage triple play service delivery. TR-069 solutions in India have been provided to all telcos by Motive and SupportSoft. UTStarcom CPEs are fully compliant with TR-069 specifications of both Motive as well as SupportSoft.
One of the major benefits of this is that UTStarcom CPEs require zero- touch configuration (that is, no manual configuration is needed). The CPE can be sent directly to the end-customer and as soon as the customer connects the CPE to the DSL line, the CPE configures itself automatically by interacting with the ACS (Automatic Configuration Server). e. Age

UTStarcom products have been successfully deployed in the field for the last five years without any significant issues. This ageing is a testimony of the robustness of our product series, which very few or no other competitors can boast of.
Edimax deals in wired and wireless networking products. “We have variety in every product range. For example, there are different technologies with different generic names such as b/g, nlite and Nmax.” Every product has its own USP. Edimax is the true leader in the innovative and unique N-technology which provides more coverage and speed than b/g technology with approximately no price difference.

“Edimax has leveraged its strength worldwide and proved to be a true leader in many product ranges. As I have said above, Edimax products have their own USP and there is no competition in the newly launched products with N-technology (150 Mbps). So, we look for a very good response from the Indian market,” says Ravians.

Marketing Strategy
UTStarcom primarily sells directly to the telecom operators (telcos) through tender bidding process. Our biggest marketing strength is the technological superiority of our products backed by our large-scale deployments the world over and our excellent record of customer service.

Ruckus has built a channel partner programme over the past year and has managed to rope in the key SIs and VARs across the country that have been focussing on providing Wi-Fi solutions to their customers. We are looking at partnering only with those who bring value to our customers.
“We focus to educate our channel partners to accept this new technology and show trust in Edimax and help in brand building and to contribute towards good cause of Edimax,” says Ravians.

Advantage Channel Partners
“Channel partners can essentially help in expanding the market, and help us getting into segments where we have not penetrated as yet. Resellers can play a vital role in expanding our reach. In fact, UTStarcom is keen on adding channel partners in India,” says Vijay Yadav, Managing Director – South Asia, UTStarcom.
“Ruckus has always recognized the value our partners bring to us. We have a healthy distribution structure and work very closely with our channel partners. With the kind of unique products we offer in the market today, the traction from the channel partners has been good as they see value in our products,” says Sudarshan Boosupalli.

Ruckus would be entering the home segment with Media Flex an IPTV over Wi-Fi product which will be installed by the IPTV service providers.

“Our MediaFlex products have proven to be the only Wi-Fi system available today to support the flicker-free delivery of IPTV services in the home. Our systems are based on patented technology that sends signals farther and automatically adapts to any changes in the environment that would cause signal degradation. Each of our Wi-Fi access points integrates a ‘smart’ antenna array and focusses and directs Wi-Fi signal only where they are needed, providing wire-like reliability that remains unmatched in the world,” says Sudarshan Boosupalli.