Customers demand SLA-driven deliverables: RAD

BANGALORE, INDIA: Jayant Deo, president, RAD India, a player in the field of network access and telecommunications solutions, in an interaction with CIOL's Muntazir Abbas speaks on the new trends and market priorities for Carrier Ethernet and mobile backhaul solutions as well as RAD's RuralSuite. Excerpts:

CIOL: What is your portfolio for last-mile connectivity? What is the competitive edge that you have in your access solutions?

Jayant Deo: RAD is globally recognized for providing its integrated and innteroperable access solutions to service providers, carriers, private network owners, utility, government and transportation customers that add value to their network at a competitive price.

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One of the biggest strengths of RAD is to provide technology-agnostic access solutions that provide competitive edge to our end customers. So whether it is 3G, Wimax, LTE, or DSL, copper or fiber, we provide a wide range of access products and network aggregation solutions to enable fast and easy deployment of multiple services, while controlling OpEx and CapEx.

CIOL: What are the new trends and market priorities for Carrier Ethernet solutions and mobile backhaul solutions in India?

Jayant: The ongoing rollout of 3G and LTE is paving the way for tremendous growth opportunities in the networking and network integration market of the country. Today customers are demanding SLA-driven deliverables that provide ease of use coupled with transparency and higher throughput.

This is driving service provider community towards next-generation networks (NGN), and Carrier Ethernet is fast emerging as an answer here.

Some of the key drivers for pushing Carrier Ethernet in the market stem from the fact that today a lot of enterprises in India are increasingly getting used to bandwidth-extensive applications like VoIP, videoconferencing or tele-presence, to share data and enable

collaboration.

These applications require high performance with an always-on connectivity scenario and this is being delivered by carrier grade Ethernet.

As Carrier Ethernet services become mainstream for business, wholesale and mobile backhaul applications, carriers and service providers are placing greater focus on shortening of deployment time, increasing operational efficiency and minimizing TCO (total cost of ownership) to ensure profitable service delivery.

Today, Carrier Ethernet is offering service providers with an innovative tool that is set to drive their growth another notch up, mitigate price erosions, accelerate time to market, reduce SLA breaches with clear service performance reporting and fewer billing disputes.

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CIOL: What is the market size of networking and inter-networking product solutions in the country, and your positioning into it?

Jayant: We have a leading market share in the ‘access networking’ segment since over 10 years in India. Currently the size of this market is $45-50 million amongst the major established four-six vendors, and this market is growing steadily.

CIOL: The mobile penetration is soaring and the government is focused on taking broadband to rural areas through National Broadband Plan. How do you see this vis-a-vis your company?

Jayant: Rural India is surely a key target market and it is likely to drive the next phase of growth for the industry. The BWA and 3G launch is set to enhance the wireless broadband penetration across the country and help in connecting the remote locations.

Globally, various governments are offering initiatives to inject vigor in the economy and at the same time generate employment by providing grants to carriers to expand their service footprint into the remote locations that are being deprived of telecom connectivity. In response

to this need, RAD has developed RuralSuite that extends wireless network coverage over copper, fiber or wireless links, both over either point-to-point or point-to-multipoint topologies.

CIOL: Do you foresee the launch of more new technology-enabled devices and equipment during 2011?

Jayant: We recently launched our product ETX-203A in India. This is a brand-new technology product for provision of business-class-Ethernet-services over fiber with guaranteed SLAs and continuous QoS monitoring capabilities at the customers’ doorsteps.

We are going to launch more such products in India during this year and we hope other leading telecom companies will also introduce latest technology-enabled equipment.

CIOL: What are your revenue targets for 2012?

Jayant: We don’t share company-confidential financial data in public domain; however, I can say that we are growing in Indian market every year and we hope to consistently maintain our rapid business growth during next three years. Telecom services will witness rapid changes during this period and we are fully geared to participate in this changing marketplace with our leading-edge access solutions.