Long-Distance Wi-Fi
In addition to these traditional uses of Wi-Fi technology, innovative Indian enterprises are deploying Wi-Fi for long-distance point-to-point links to extend their networks to remote locations where fixed line broadband services are either not available or prohibitively expensive.

By erecting towers and directional antennae, these enterprises are able to achieve links over 40 kilometers with throughputs up to 10 Mbps. By comparison a leased line that might typically serve a small or medium sized enterprise delivers 2, 4 or 8 Mbps throughput. Long-range Wi-Fi can match or exceed these throughput levels at a compelling price.

Gridharan G. Vidi, who is founder and CEO of Yugae Technologies (networking and wireless solution and services provider for campus and building outdoor point-point or point-multipoint Wi-Fi) tells us that they have seen many long range Wi-Fi requirements from customers who have branch offices or warehouses outside the city limit but headquarters within.

Wi-Fi effectively addresses the problem of non-availability of leased line connections on the outskirts of city provided that power and line-of-sight (LOS) requirements are addressed.

Wi-Fi Market Size
From our discussions with major system integrators and wireless local area network (WLAN) solution providers, the outlook for the Wi-Fi market is very positive. Systems integrators report that a majority of enterprise customers are setting up wireless networks based on 802.11 standards to allow their employees some level of mobility (working in conference rooms, café, colleagues’ desk etc).

For the small office / home office (SOHO) market, Wi-Fi is mainly used to share the broadband connection among a number of users.

More hotels, airports, and convention centers have begun offering Wi-Fi access to their patrons. End users now expect free Wi-Fi access at these places which is causing a reexamination of revenue and business models. Industry leaders tell us that significant investment is taking place in the installation and expansion of public/private hot-spots.

There are also efforts underway to unwire two cities in India (Bangalore and Pune) but the project has been experiencing some delays due to non-technical reasons.

With the availability 802.11n draft products, many small/medium enterprises are slowly moving to completely unwired infrastructures for their office LANs. The ratification of the IEEE 802.11n standard is certain to enhance wireless communications for businesses and consumers of all types.

It promises throughputs comparable with wire-line Fast Ethernet and improved range. For the network operator, that translates into lower hardware expenditures for both internal wiring and access points. While most of the current enterprise deployments are 802.11b/g, they are actively considering 802.11n for future deployments.

We see continued growth for Wi-Fi in the coming years. The wireless networks of today are capable of delivering voice, video and data simultaneously. With growing popularity of notebook computers in business customers and rapid rise in broadband connectivity among the enterprises, WLAN gear such as wireless routers, access points, Wi-Fi dongles are expected to enjoy very healthy growth in India. As Wi-Fi based service providers start managed Wi-Fi networks as clouds over pockets of metros, targeting mobile data users.

The Wi-Fi market in India should comfortably exceed $1 billion by 2011-2012. This estimate represents an increase from our March 2008 projection of more than 12% and includes wireless network gear, professional services, system integration but excludes Wi-Fi chip sets embedded in laptops and devices. We also expect this segment will now begin to attract private equity investments from global financial houses and the sector will assume more respectability as the emerging markets such as India will become battlefront for broadband and wireless data service providers.