Buying Tips
n RoI: This
is the most important criterion of choosing any equipment and broadband
equipments are no exception. The ability to provision a variety of service
rapidly becomes a subset of RoI criterion.
n Speed of
Deployment: It is important for the service providers to ensure that
deployment is quick, so that it translates into a stable system with solutions
that are readily marketable and things are not left to experimentations.
n Open
Technology Platform: By avoiding proprietary boxes, operators are guaranteed
to have products conforming to operational, maintenance, control and
provisioning standards.
n Benchmarking:
Testing of equipment before actually buying has become a norm across the
world. There are independent testing organizations which do the product testing,
besides specialized T&M companies like Agilent and Acterna who do it on
behalf of the vendors. However, TEC also does testing before a product
introduced in India.
n Capability
to Add New Services: The flexibility of equipment to let the operators to
add new services, over and above basic access services.
n Scalability:
The ability of the service providers to scale up from a small investment to
a large infrastructure with minimum impact on services availability is of
obvious importance.
n Investment
Protection: In an era of consolidation of services providers due to mergers
and acquisition, it is important for the operator that his networking
infrastructure gets a higher valuation through best asset value. This is
possible only if the operator chooses equipment from reputed vendors who not
only contribute and participate actively in the global standards forums but also
develop and manufacture products conforming to global standards.
n Migration to
Emerging Standards: Operator is more comfortable with product’s
conformance to the industry standards so that his investment is protected. Also,
the operator has to ensure that solution selected by him stands the test of time
and is supported by an emerging technology migration path. This enables the
service providers to grow network modularly.
n Standards: One
should look for ITU-standard compliance both at the access as well as core level
to ensure a guaranteed QoS delivery to the CPE when circuits are built across
the network. This saves the operator from getting stuck to a particular vendor
for CPEs.
Market Information
Broadband services in India has not really taken off till now. According to
IDC, Indian broadband equipment market is expected to touch Rs 66.52 crore by
2005. Lucent, Alcatel, Juniper, Paradyne are some of the leading vendors in the
broadband equipment space.
Bangalore-based I-Spatial has won the BSNL tender to provide broadband
service riding on the PSU’s network. I-Spatial has tied up with Nortel,
Minerva Networks, nCube and Paradyne Network. It has already started two pilot
projects at Jadavpur telephone exchange near Kolkata and Ghaziabad near Delhi to
demonstrate its offerings. Offerings include fast Internet access at 128 kbps,
video-on-demand, movie-on-demand and games. BSNL officials expect a full-scale
commercial launch by 31 March in Kolkata, Pune and Bangalore. The services would
be extended to Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh by the end of
August. Similarly Reliance Infocomm plans to rollout its broadband initiative in
the coming months in more than 100 cities. Bharti has also started offering high
speed Internet through DSL.
On the cable front, big MSOs like Hathway, In2Cable, and Siticable are trying
to expand the market.
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