With over 390 million wireless users and a dynamic technology landscape, the Indian telecom market is a key area for telecom vendor Tellabs. The company, which has been present in the country for about two decades, is looking to strengthen its position and tap the business opportunity offered by 3G and the advent of next-generation networks (NGNs). On a recent visit to India from the US, Dr Vikram Saksena, executive vice-president and chief technology officer, Tellabs, spoke to tele.net about the challenges and opportunities in the Indian market and the company’s strategy for growth. Excerpts…
What has been the impact of the global downturn on Tellabs?
The telecom sector as a whole has not been affected as much as some of the other industries. Overall, it appears that the situation is improving for all carriers, both in the developed and emerging markets. What happened last year is in the past and we are pretty excited about the future. Coming to India and talking to the carriers has been very beneficial for me as the enthusiasm and excitement in the Indian telecom sector is palpable.
What are the company’s major products and services in India?
Tellabs has been in India for around 20 years. We have been involved in building optical transport systems and are the leaders in synchronous digital hierarchybased technology, which is the first wave in optical transmission systems followed by time wave division multiplexing (TWDM) and now carrier Ethernet. We continue to hold substantial market share among major tier-I carriers, and want to leverage that position as the networks and applications are becoming data centric from being voice centric.
Data-centric networks are designed around the philosophy of distribution rather than centralisation. So, as mobile networks move to 3G and 4G and as broadband penetrates increasingly through fibre and other technologies, the networks will become data centric. As a result, a migration from TDM to packet will be necessary, not only from a transport perspective but also from a switching and intelligence perspective.
What is Tellabs’ strategy in India?
Tellabs has always been a focused player unlike the big companies which I call “Jack of all trades and master of none”. Unlike these companies, which tend to do everything but are not really the best in any particular area, Tellabs’ strategy has always been to pick areas where it can be the best and hold that market share.
We have identified optical networking, wireless data and business services with IP, multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) and carrier Ethernet as our main focus areas. On the wireless side, I think the big opportunity is transforming mobile backhaul from a voice-centric, centralised architecture to a data-centric, distributed network.
We will not own every part of the network because we are only dealing with strategic parts like mobile data, optical TWDM layers and IP/MPLS layers. We want to be the leading vendor in India for these strategic parts. I want the customers to think about Tellabs when they think about innovation, about doing something new, or when they do not get what they need from their existing supplier or legacy vendor. Our ambition is not necessarily to be the leading vendor but certainly to capture the mindshare as the most innovative vendor and be the vendor which owns the strategic part of networks.
The technologies we are investing in from the perspective of research and development (R&D) are cutting edge. We intend to bring back innovation to the Indian market as it moves towards 3G. We are very excited about the opportunity.
How important is the Indian market for you? How does it compare with the Southeast Asian markets?
The Indian market is definitely very high on our list. The growth rate here and the number of subscribers make it extremely important that we dominate this market in the segment we want. We are focusing on R&D and looking to customise products through local R&D. The Indian market is very important for us from both the technology and sales sides. We are investing quite heavily here.
India and China are definitely the two biggest economies. I don’t know how to rank or compare the Southeast Asian markets, but these two markets are certainly larger than the others.
What are the key challenges here?
Feature functionality has to be at a competitive price and performance level because the ARPUs in India are very different. Providing true carrier-based networks has been our strength, and improving the availability of networks is the key driver. Therefore, customising our products for the Indian market in a speedy and costeffective manner is very important for us.
What are the key technology trends in India?
In India, an important technology trend that is driving growth is the convergence of the mobile and internet. The internet has become the playground for creating the next generation of social media services. It has changed the way people interact with each other. Today people are on Facebook or on a blog, which proves that the internet has dramatically changed the way they interact.
The mobile, especially smartphones like the iPhone and BlackBerry, has given people a personalised device that is suited to their lifestyle. Whether it is music, video, communication or contacts, users want to customise their devices to match their lifestyles. Tellabs feels that this is one phenomenon that is driving the sector’s growth.
Transformation is also taking place as dedicated data centres are being virtualised into a cloud computing infrastructure. Tellabs sees big opportunities here as well because cloud computing is another form of virtual networking.
Tellabs thrives on innovation as it gives us an edge over the big players. Our strength is the ability to leap-frog ahead of the big companies through innovation. We were the first to bring the optical ROADM product and the SDH product to India, and we want to be the first company to bring next-generation mobile networks. We want to be the first company to bring cloud-based networking as well.
That is my dream.
What will be the future of 3G in India?
I think the opportunities are huge because 3G networks are needed to make devices like smartphones really work.
Indians love Bollywood and cricket and if we can bring just these two things to the smartphone, people can watch their favourite “six” or their favourite song or movie clip at a very high speed.
What are the likely challenges for 3G in India?
There have been numerous issues about spectrum allocation. There are significant challenges regarding how spectrum will be distributed amongst the carriers and how the companies can efficiently utilise the spectrum they receive.
Another challenge is to move towards packet-oriented or data-centric networks. Shifting from a voice-centric network to a data-centric network is a significant challenge and I think carriers need to pick their partners very carefully. A company could make a wrong choice with a vendor and get stuck with a legacy architecture while building a next-generation architecture which is optimised for 3G. There are many vendors and they are all trying to get a piece of the action, but most of them cannot figure out how to optimise these networks.
But Tellabs is capable of doing that. We would like to partner with Indian carriers and get them moving in the right direction.
What is the road map for next-generation networks in India?
Moving up from the transport side, the migration from SDH to carrier Ethernet will happen but it will take some time as these technologies (TDM and packet) will have to coexist for a while. Over time, it will all become packet-centric data.
The migration involves moving from a ring to a mesh topology and being more dynamic in the way you route your wavelength, restoration and improving your availability. Thus, when somebody digs up the street and cuts the fibres, the service is not lost. The whole process of redesigning the physical topologies from rings to mesh is a challenge.
When you move up the stack, Ethernet and IP/MPLS are focus areas. Beyond that, content distribution and content caching will be important. As more and more content is consumed on 3G networks, centralised content on a few video servers will consume too much bandwidth and be inefficient. Converting these data networks into content distribution networks, I think, is the final step that will make these networks truly unleash the power of 3G.
These are all 5to 10-year trends and have to be planned and executed with careful vision.
Which technologies will be important for India in the coming years?
On the device side, making smartphones really affordable will be vital so that people belonging to the middle class can also buy them. For me, this is one big transition that needs to happen, without which people will not be able to utilise 3G services in spite of 3G networks being available.
I do not see other technological issues being major hurdles. It is just a matter of India moving to carrier Ethernet or IP/MPLS. I do not see any issues from the availability point of view; the challenges are operational.
