On the current scenario of the wireless infrastructure market

With the recovery of the global economic conditions, the wireless market demand in India is to continue rising at an accelerated rate in 2009. We think the continued expansion of India's wireless market is due to the declining costs of calls, the availability of inexpensive handsets, increasing geographical coverage, and VAS. All operators will enlarge their investment in wireless infrastructure to attract more mobile users.

On factors driving the growth of the Indian wireless infrastructure market

Compared with traditional 2G network, 3G network can provide high data speeds up to 14.4mbps. Further mobile services providers will offer video calls, LCS, Live TV, movie downloads etc for the high-end user. These 3G-based services will help operators to boost ARPU and are expected to drive the growth of the wireless infrastructure market.

With the economy on the recovery mode, what are your growth plans for FY '09-10?

We have grown rapidly in the last three years in India with an annual turnover in FY '08-09 of almost Rs. 4500 crore, an almost 250 percent increase over the previous year. We expect this growth rate to continue through FY '09-10 as well. We have already achieved targeted growth in the first half of this FY and expect the momentum of growth to be even faster in the second half as the global economic situation improves.

On key demand verticals

We expect the key demand verticals to be WCDMA and GSM infrastructure, CDMA infrastructure, handsets and terminals (both GSM and CDMA domain), optical networking equipment, next generation networks and IP based core networks, wireless broadband solutions (WiMAX), and wire line broadband solutions (ADSL2+, Fiber-to-the-home solutions).

On major customers

Almost all the mobile operators are our customers such as Reliance, TATA, SSTL, Vodafone, Idea cellular, Loop Telecom, BSNL, Airtel, Etisalat, and Aircel.

What are the customer's expectations in terms of after-sales services, AMCs, response time, and turnkey services?

Today, most of the service providers in the private and the public sector depend on system integrators to provide the complete networking solution on a turnkey basis. They expect that after sales service, operations & maintenance, and capacity addition should be the responsibility of the system integrator/network solutions provider. Usually they have an agreement with the SI (system integrator/vendor) to provide guaranteed uptime and response time, which is defined in the SLA (Service Level Agreement). Most of the service providers have decided to handle the functions of promotion, sales, marketing, and provisioning of their services, leaving the back-end work to be done by the SI/vendor. This concept is properly known as managed services.

What are the security issues involved in laying down wireless networks?

All networks in this country'be it wire line or wireless'need to be secure. There are clear official guidelines from the security agencies to the Licensor (DOT) about the security requirements that need to be followed by each licensee (or service provider).These conditions are etched in the license agreement between the licensor (DOT) and the licensee (service provider). The conditions are slightly enhanced for wireless networks as over-the-air networks are more prone to data/information leakage than wire line/fixed networks.