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"India Has The Potential Of Being One Of The Most Exciting Internet Markets"

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update
alt="Jeff Gustaffson, marketing manager for Asia-Pacific"

width="118" height="163">
Ascend Communications,

founded in 1989, has been strong in the remote access

segment. A 1997 report by Dell’Oro puts

Ascend’s world-wide marketshare in access

concentrators for analog, ISDN PRI, and T1 to be 50, 62,

and 33 percent, respectively. With last year’s

acquisition of Cascade Communications, strong in the

Frame Relay segment, Ascend is positioned as a leading

provider of technology and equipment solutions for

telecom carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

size="2">With privatization of Internet services about to

take off in India, the company is excited about the new

situation and is eager to make its presence felt here. In

an interview with Nareshchandra Laishram, the

company’s marketing manager for Asia-Pacific, Jeff

Gustaffson
and Paul Whetstone, its

territory manager, India and Pakistan, give an idea of

what Ascend’s future role in India is going to be.

Excerpts ...

alt="Paul Whetstone, territory manager, India and Pakistan"

width="118" height="151">
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When are you planning to

establish Ascend’s presence in India?

We have already decided to

establish our presence in India. While we are working on building

our own infrastructure, we already have a local presence through

our reseller Datacraft India.

What has prompted you to

have a direct presence? 

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The Indian market is just

opening up for Internet and any company going into the business

will have to bring in people from outside who have built very

large networks for Internet and have the technology.

How exciting will be the

private ISP segment here? How do you see India in comparision to

other countries?

Of course, India has the

potential of being one of the most exciting markets in the world,

as there is a very large technology-literate population. The

challenge will be India’s capability to single-mindedly

build an efficient telecommunications infrastructure
size="2"> to handle high bandwidth data communications.

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Presently you have only one

reseller in India. Now that you have decided to be more visible,

are you looking at having many more channels?

India is not only a very large

country, it also has many market segments. It is our practice to

identify and recruit the strongest partners for each market

segment, whether it is an industry market segment or geographic

market segment. This approach is good for the resellers as it

helps to avoid most channels conflict. It does provide

alternative sources of products, services, and support when

required.

Potential ISPs in India are

now closely looking at various issues and permutations and

combinations—viability of the business, cost of equipment,

and so on. What are your perceptions as a major vendor targeting

ISPs specifically?

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ISPs in India will face issues

similar to most ISPs in the world. The most important being how

to set up and run a profitable business. This means, an ISP must

determine how to differentiate itself from others. If it does

this, it has a better chance of capturing certain market segments

with good quality customers who are willing to pay more money for

the specific value offered by it.

An ISP in order to do this successfully, needs

to build an infrastructure utilizing equipment that has wide

range of functionality, scaleability, superior management, and

compatibility with core access equipment that can offer a managed

network for Quality Of Service (QOS) which is required for voice

and video applications.

Do you integrate as well?

And what kind of consultancy do you provide? Who will take care

of these aspects in India?

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We do integrate our products as

we see that it is important to not only be able to provide the

public Internet with best effort delivery policy, but also to

provide public networks which can be fully managed and provide

guaranteed QOS. We can provide a full range of consultancy,

including business and technical. Consultancy can be provided by

Ascend, Ascend’s partners, or a combination.

Do we need end-to-end

solutions at all? Why will the customer go for one company’s

products only rather than choose what is best for him?

A fully integrated end-to-end

solution should be the goal of the customer. The reason for this

is that the cost of hardware ends up to be a small percentage of

the total cost of providing a carrier or ISP solution. The

network should be provided with hardware and software products

that are built to work together because this ultimately will save

cost in the areas that are a much higher percentage of the total

cost, namely developing and managing services.

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The Indian market is just

opening up for Internet and any company going into the

business will have to bring in people from outside who

have built very large networks for Internet and have the

technology.

Cost is what everyone out

here is worried of. As a vendor, what are your concerns about it?

Any step or process you are likely to take on this front? Will

smaller players be able to afford becoming an ISP?

First, our products are

competitively priced in the industry. About smaller players being

able to afford becoming an ISP, the fact is that when running an

ISP or carrier, the cost of hardware is actually very small

compared to the costs involved in providing services and managing

the network. It will be smart business management in all areas,

including sales, marketing, service packaging, and support, that

will make an ISP successful, not low-cost hardware.

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What are the

products/services you are most likely to provide the private ISPs

here?

We are having discussions with

private ISPs on their requirements. However, the government

decision on releasing licences will result in a much broader

understanding of the business and technology environment.

As you must be aware, the

carrier line conditions out here are not the best. Entrepreneurs

generally lack financial resources. Internet technologies are

still alien to many of us here. Given these, how confident are

you about India? Have you done some homework?

Given a favourable environment,

both in terms of available network capacity and business

conditions, we are very optimistic about our prospects in India.

We are in the process of researching what the total potential

size of the market is. However, we do know that it is very

significant.

Any targets for India ...

We cannot predict this until

there is more stabilization in the political situation. Our

potential revenue is heavily dependant on the presence of a

market. 

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