India is the world?s second-largest telecommunications market and according to a recent report by the IBEF it is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 20 per cent during the period 2008?2015. Though the sector has shown unprecedented opportunities in rural telephony, 4G, virtual private network and value added services, the lack of adequate telecom infrastructure in rural areas and the falling average revenue per user of telecom service providers could inhibit the future growthof the industry.
With its high population and development potential, India is considered to be one of the largest emerging markets in the world, and has the fastest growing telecom network in the world. According to a recent report released by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International, it is estimated that by June 2014 India will have 243 million internet users.
The rural market in the country is also rapidly scaling up and the number of users accessing the internet for videos andsocial mediawebsites such as Facebook and Twitter is increasing at a rapid pace. As the number of devices increases exponentially, service providers need to ensure that the backbone infrastructure is capable of handling this increasing demand. To sustain growth, it is vital to ensure that we connect rural areas and provide them with efficient infrastructure that does not require high maintenance, whether to roll out new services or as a result of potential fibre cuts and damage that could disrupt connectivity. Service Providers require their high-speed fibre-optic service deployments to be fast, efficient and reliable so that network downtime does not hamper their ability to fulfil this growing demand.
The economic development of the country has also contributed to the rapid growth of the Internet across regions. Social media websites, online shopping, entertainment websites and online gaming have resulted in a massive growth of the user base. The IAMAI and IMRB reportindicates that almost 86 percent Indians visit a social media site and nearly217 minutes arespent on Facebook by theaverage user.
While there is tremendous growth being seen in this space, Indian service providers also have to contend with significant infrastructural challenges that have a direct impact on their business. One of the primary challenges for network service providers is the high frequency of service disruptions due to fibre cuts that occur throughout the country. The frequency and scale at which these disruptions occur in India can be detrimental to any service provider and can directly impact their bottom line. Moreover, the disruption of service and frequent downtime poses a serious challenge to ensuring high quality and consistent customer service.
Apart from this,, in the context of high volume traffic, some of the other critical challenges we face in the Indian market include:
Rural infrastructure
Lack of adequate telecom infrastructure in semi-rural and rural areas to support new network and business growth.
4G adoption
While the global market has already embraced 4G technology, India is lagging behind in the implementation of a fully functional 4G network that extends to all regions in the country.
Rapidly growing user base
Urban India will continue to account for a large percentage of mobile internet users across the country. According to a recent IAMAI study, the number of users accessing the web on their mobile devices is expected to reach 155 million by March 2014 and touch 185 million users by June 2014 resulting in a huge demand for bandwidth.
In order to address the above challenges and ensure service up time and speed to market, service providers need to partner with technology vendors that have a keen understanding of the local market challenges as well as the technology expertise required in the region. By investing in the right technology, service providers will be able to address the frequent fibre cuts by leveraging innovative solutions such as Fast Shared Mesh Protection (FastSMP) technology, which uses an increasingly intelligent transport network to ensure high resiliency and near instantaneous network restoration, thus enhancing network reliability. This translates to consistent up time and the ability to deliver high quality customer service without disruption. Service providersthat invest in technology of this nature will be able to offer further differentiated services in the market and have a significantly higher competitive business advantage.
Additional factors such as the proliferation of data centres, and increasing consumption of video are alsochanging the traffic characteristics in operator networks. Networks have grown in complexity with the explosion of network layers and fibre interconnects which has increased the time it takes to plan and deploy network services. Network operators are now faced with intense competition to meet customer demand for both immediate and future bandwidth needs. For carriers to exploit the increasing demand for cloud-based services and data centre connectivity they need an intelligent transport network so that they can flexibly and rapidly, or even automatically, provision new 10G, 40G or 100G services. By eliminating the costly truck rolls and potential delays between the time a service order is placed and the time that services are provisioned allows carriers to use time as a weapon to increase revenues. By rapidly offering reliable, differentiated services while reducing operating costs through scale, multi-layer convergence and automation carriers can both meet India?s increasing broadband demand and remain profitable.
Ensuring adequate and efficient telecom infrastructure is the foundation for the delivery of superior telecom services. Service providers are now faced with the task of matching their technology and infrastructure to meet the challenging and changing demands of customers and most countries are investing significantly in building and scaling new telecom infrastructure to cater to future market dynamics. As end-users demand more connectivity with mobile devices and cloud based applications, and service providers reboot their network to support 100G Ethernet services and 500G super-channels, leading edge technology is needed for intelligent transport networks to become a reality. Converging 500 Gb/s super-channel transmission with multi-terabit OTN switching and intelligent software enables network operators to differentiate their fibre services in a competitive global market by delivering provisioning speed and network and service flexibility while reducing operational costs. With the core of the network industry shifting to 100G WDM services, service providers need to ensure that they partner with the right infrastructure provider that understands their specific challenges and helps them build and deploy technologythat instantly meets their specific challenges while also allowing them to scale up quickly to meet new customer demands.
In India, the growth of video content is bound to be a huge driver of bandwidth demand over the coming year, and the majority of capacity growth will stem from Tier 2 markets, warranting the need for intelligent transport networks that can overcome the challenge of fibre cuts by offering high resiliency and restoration services that empower service providers with the capability and confidence to cater to this new demand.
