BROADBAND EQUIPMENT: Go for Open Platforms

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.

EXPERTS PANEL A Sethuraman, director, Alcatel Broadband Division Java Giridhar, country manager, Juniper Networks Krishnan Kannan, marketing manager (broadband communications sector), Motorola India