Wireless in India

Wi-Fi is picking up on the back of growing notebook numbers. WiMAX however is still a no-show. Priya Jain on the state of wireless in India— and where it is headed.

One of the major reasons for the growth of the wireless networking market in India has been the government’s deregulation of the frequencies covered by the 802.11b standard. Since then, companies no longer need to obtain a licence for the indoor use of compliant equipment. The 802.11g standard has also been finalised, upping wireless connectivity speeds to 54 Mbps from 11.

Geoff Johnson, Vice- president & Research Director, Asia Pacific Telecom & Networking, Gartner, is of the opinion that one of the biggest trends in Wi-Fi has been its increased penetration and coverage. He feels that Wi-Fi has better scope in India because it’s an inexpensive technology that’s globally deployed and thus has many takers.

On the other hand, WiMAX is yet to catch on despite some inherent advantages (such as better reach) largely on account of lack of standardisation.

Wi-Fi’s growing

Gartner believes that the growth of Wi-Fi will be due to enterprise demand for mobile connectivity. “Mobility in the biggest sense is one of the reasons why enterprises are looking at technologies such as Wi-Fi. The other reason is the technology’s ability to affect business process,” says Johnson. Nikhil Jain, President & COO, Elitecore Technologies, also believes that the driving force behind Wi-Fi are mobile business users and tourists.

Today, Wi-Fi is an option on most computing devices, including notebooks, PDAs and cell phones. Looking at the present scenario, Parag Arora, Business Development Manager, Cisco Systems India & SAARC says, “Wi-Fi is increasingly gaining acceptance in the market. In the past 24 months we have observed broad-based adoption of the technology.” The company’s wireless revenues are growing by 60 percent year-on-year (YOY).

K Surendar, Country Manager, Dax, states that the overall growth in Wi-Fi is considerably higher than the average growth of the networking industry. He estimates growth in the Wi-Fi segment at 60 percent.

In India, hospitality, corporates and the education sector are eagerly adopting Wi-Fi. User segments that can benefit and which many vendors feel would be the biggest adopters of this technology are SOHO and SMBs.

“Wi-Fi has been well-accepted and adopted in many SOHO and SMB markets in India. However, there has not been a corresponding growth in the number of hotspots,” comments Ashok S, Business Manager, Systimax AirSPEED wireless solutions. Many feel that though the number of public hotspots is increasing, usage has not been quite consistent. It is largely the hospitality segment that is driving hotspot initiatives.

The other encouraging aspect for the adoption of Wi-Fi has been the increasing penetration of notebooks. IDC states that the notebook segment was the star performer in Q2 05 growing 60 percent sequentially and 138 percent YOY to cross one lakh units in the quarter.

“The current PC penetration in India is very low, but with the new low-cost PCs and laptops we expect this to increase dramatically. Strong sales of notebooks—the fastest-growing segment of the PC market with 115 percent growth in December last year—also shows increasing demand,” says Malur Narayan, Director, Wireless Solutions, Marketing (India), Nortel.

Hurdles remain

Rajesh Sahore, Country Manager of Allied Telesyn, explains that there are various reasons why Wi-Fi has not become common. The most prominent are government licencing policies and perceptions such as security concerns, cost and quality of service (QoS) that have had a negative impact on deployments. To add to it, government regulations insisting on approvals from various authorities, licence procedures to import wireless equipment, and costs thereof have contributed to making things harder for wireless service providers.

“Low awareness of the benefits of Wi-Fi continues to remain a major barrier to adoption. But we should expect large scale adoption in the near future,” says Narayan.

Easy authentication and roaming are critical if greater Wi-Fi usage is to come about. Prasad Babu, Senior SE Manager (India & SAARC), Juniper Networks says that Wi-Fi is facing competition from wireless dial-up connections via GSM, CDMA and GPRS data cards that also provide wireless Internet connectivity.

Adds Sanjay Koul, Country Manager (India & SAARC), SMC, “Even though the policy makers have been kind enough to delicence the 2.4 GHz spectrum (specifically, the 2.40-2.48 GHz band), allowing the use of 802.11b and g within the band both indoors and within the campus, regulations pertaining to Wi-Fi or WLAN deployment and usage still remain unfavourable.”

Vendors are unhappy about the low power levels permitted. The delicenced 2.4 GHz devices have to be restricted to 100 million watts of radiated power output (26 dBm) with a coverage area restriction placed within the single contiguous campus of an individual and duly recognised organisation or institution. In other words, it means that Wi-Fi equipped organisations must deploy tools to restrict signals from leaking beyond their buildings or premises. Also, hotspots in public areas still need licences from the Wireless Planning & Co-ordination Wing, and violations are illegal and liable for penalties.

On the other hand, Surendar says that, “The cost of laptops going down is definitely a good sign. However, there are other hindrances such as structure of the building and design of the office that make implementing Wi-Fi difficult for a network manager. Of course, one can have multiple access points to boost the signal. But with more access points deployed, the cost will also be high, so one has to decide after conducting a cost/ benefit analysis.”

Wired vs. wireless

There are some hitches with Wi-Fi that many feel are temporary, such as cost and reach. In a wired network, users can gain throughput of anything from 100 Mbps to Gigabit speeds vis-à-vis 11 or 54 Mbps in the case of Wi-Fi. Secondly, a wired network is much more secure than a wireless one. Till such technology differences exist, wired networks will remain the default choice, while Wi-Fi will be a choice opted for more out of convenience than anything else.

While the cost of deploying a wireless network continues to be greater than that of a wired network, Ashok believes that growing adoption will result in lower prices of wireless equipment. Moreover, there are some features which a wired connection cannot provide, such as mobility. Considering all this, the price will not be a real stopping factor.

Koul feels that though there is a general feeling that wireless connectivity is more expensive than wireline, looking at it from a macro perspective and in the longer run, wireless does have certain advantages over wireline that cannot be negated or ignored. Because it’s not wireline, there’s no need for the customer to pay a monthly leased line cost, and a service provider can introduce a pay-as-you-go model. There is a huge demand in the market for pre-paid broadband, and it’s something that the wireline operators can’t offer. There’s always some capital expenditure associated with line maintenance. Therefore, if you look at the TCO (total cost of ownership), which is the sum of the cost of acquisition and maintenance, wireless wins over wireline connectivity.

Experts feel that as Wi-Fi equipment can be deployed quickly, standalone operators will also enter this sector, and there will be a sharp increase in the number of hotspots in India. According to Arora, the cost of access has already fallen by 50 percent.

WiMAX for the last mile

WiMAX or 802.16 is an extension of Wi-Fi, the difference being that the former has better reach and can potentially solve the last-mile problem to bring broadband connectivity to remote areas. For a country like India, WiMAX should have been a dream come true. Sadly, it has yet to make its presence felt. Johnson holds the view that WiMAX is a niche opportunity in the country.

Surendar feels that the government is taking keen interest in promoting the technology by setting up an R&D establishment with Alcatel to manufacture WiMAX customer premise equipment. “Hence, one expects to have no governmental licencing restrictions on WiMAX.”

Nevertheless, Wi-Fi and WiMAX address different needs, hence they should be able to co-exist. Says Sahore, “Wi-Fi and WiMAX are part of the same underlying technology, but have different applications. Wi-Fi provides seamless access within a small radius such as campus or airport lounge, whereas once WiMAX hits the market it will provide enterprises the ability to connect at speeds as high as 70 Mbps over a range of up to 48 km. Since WiMAX would be a fairly new technology, WiMAX will be comparatively expensive, therefore it is safe to assume that both the technologies have a role to play in the Indian market.”

Jain believes that WiMAX can offer cost-effective backhauling as well as remote connectivity. While WiMAX brings connectivity to the premises and does away with last-mile wireline requirements, Wi-Fi can take over from there to deliver connectivity to the desk and home. In fact, that’s the reason why Elitecore Technologies has different products catering to the two segments. While 24online caters to the Wi-Fi market, JISP Convergent Billing caters to WiMAX, in addition to other wireless and wireline technologies.

Koul has a different view of WiMAX’s future. He believes that WiMAX will be primarily adopted by businesses to replace or displace DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), and offices that want to cover a lot of territory without entering the world of endless repeaters that are necessary with 802.11 technologies. It will take some time for WiMAX to significantly reduce its price-point for residential uptake.

In the end...

Meanwhile, Sahore feels that the interest in WiMAX has been encouraging. However, it is yet to be seen how this will convert into the sales of WiMAX equipment. The government’s policies are not very conducive to the actual usage of wireless, especially when it comes to connectivity over WAN. If these policies are relaxed a bit, it will help the sales of both Wi-Fi and WiMAX solutions.

The other hurdle for the shift to WiMAX is that there’s no definite set of standards for products and the frequency spectrum. Unless this aspect is addressed, the infrastructure cannot be decided upon. As pointed out by Jain, the industry has been focussing on technology issues. Greater attention needs to be paid to

the OSS/BSS (Operations Support System/Business Support System) front, which will enhance WiMAX’s profitability through QoS, usage controls, value-added services and higher revenues. “We have implemented JISP, our convergent billing solution in pre-WiMAX deployments, enabling higher revenues and profitability. Also, freeing up spectrum is another issue to be handled for WiMAX expansion,” says Jain.

Though Wi-Fi will see growth in applications because of the changing mindset of customers, WiMAX deployment remains to be seen.

priya@expresscomputeronline.com