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WiFi

Pushing Broadband Boundaries

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With India’s broadband penetration still remaining to be a big challenge, a cutting edge technology like WiFi holds big potential to realize the country’s broadband dreams and enable unwired mobility for everyone

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ireless communication has changed the dynamics of communication. We are living in a convergence friendly era where there are multiple devices communicating with each other with rich media content. Today's technologically advanced world has made it possible for us to stay connected 24x7 with our friends and family.

Without being tethered to a fixed location consumers can stay connected from anywhere. Advanced technology means that people are now able to use this wireless devise to make calls, connect to the Internet and access their work and files, wherever they are.

According to Nafis Kazim, COO, Shyam Networks Ltd, wireless communication has changed the dynamics of communication. “We are living in a convergence friendly era where there are multiple devices communicating with each other with rich media content. Today's technologically advanced world has made it possible for us to stay connected 24x7 with our friends and family. Without being tethered to a fixed location consumers can stay connected from anywhere.

Advanced technology means that people are now able to use this wireless devise to make calls, connect to the Internet and access their work and files, wherever they are,” he explains.

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As described by Rajesh Sahore, Founder & CEO, Aries Networks. With the newer wireless standards being ratified, WiFi today has reached at such a technological level, that it is no longer seen as complement to wired technology, but sometimes, even as an option for replacement of Wired technology.

“Upcoming WiFi technologies cater to even Gigabit Ethernet speeds making it an even sweeter deal for the consumers. WiFi as a technology thrives on it's capability of providing mobility to the users. Today, almost every organization, be it large or small, or individuals prefer to procure a laptop/tablet/smartphone in their endeavor to be mobile and yet be digitally connected to the world. Thus providing a higher level of productivity and efficiency. This can be provided only by a Wireless Technology. Add to this, the security features which are much more stronger, thus giving confidence and comfort to it's users,” he adds on.

Indian Market for WiFi As being put by Dhananjay Ganjoo Director - Telecom, Juniper Networks, India & SAARC, “Recent telecom reports indicate that by 2011-2012, the Wi-Fi networking market and services in India will increase by USD$890million, making a 36% compound annual MOBILITY www.mobilityindia.com

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growth rate from 2008. With the increasing use of mobile devices and penetration of wireless broadband, wireless connectivity is becoming a reality with its rapid deployment at personally and commercially,’ he explains.

According to Shridhar Kadam, VP - Product Management, DIGISOL, there is huge potential for WiFi in India.

“Future of Wi-Fi in India is good as uses of Wi-Fi is increasing in homes and the Home User category is one of the fastest growing categories needing computing and communication infrastructure. The emerging Indian broadband market is on the verge of a huge growth curve. And WiFi is perfectly positioned to provide instant broadband access today from devices that are already available, over unlicensed spectrum in a Safe, Secure and Reliable manner.

Lot of hand Handled Devices like Mobile Phones, Netpad, netbooks comes with Built in Wi-Fi, hence penetration of wireless will increase rapidly. Another upcoming wireless standard is 802.11ac. This Wi-Fi standard promises more bandwidth & more simultaneous users, he explains.

According to Shishir Singh, Director, Product Marketing, Dell India, Wi-Fi is one of the most ubiquitous wireless communication technologies in use today, primarily because it is easy to install, easy to use and inexpensive.

It was originally designed as a way of extending internet connections wirelessly within an enterprise.

“However today what makes such a technology so special is that, WiFi enables devices to access internet content, not just within a home or enterprise but from anywhere and anytime which plays a huge role in increasing the efficiency and productivity of the workforce. At Dell we are focused on enabling people to pursue their passions through technology, and allowing customers to enjoy an ‘always connected’ lifestyle.

Today there are hundreds of millions of devices which use Wi-Fi including tablets, smart phones, TVs and set tops. As consumer needs are also changing, there is a huge convergence of user devices which enable consumers to easily connect anytime, anywhere.” He adds on.

The previous year witnessed the continued growth and expansion of Wi-Fi to become a key mobility enabler in people’s daily lives, and the same is expected in the year 2012, with new trends and developments emerging around Wi-Fi, make a big impact on unabated growth of Wi-Fi. “At Dell, we believe that mobility will dictate the form factor of computing devices in the years to follow. One of the latest trends is that of Tablets and Ultrabooks, devices are getting slimmer and at the same time, they are packed with great performance and more connectivity options. With the increasing penetration of WiFi connectivity and growth of WiFi hotspots, it gives consumers the power to choose how they want to use technology to make their lives better,” explains, Shishir Singh from Dell.

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As explained by Jason Xu, Director of TP-LINK India, WiFi Technology is becoming increasingly important to daily life, which not only makes the lives of Wi-Fi users more productive, convenient and fun, but is also rapidly developing to accommodate many traditional applications in the home that require more speed and bandwidth.

“Wi-Fi connects you to your office, your family, your entertainment over your mobile phone, computer, media players and other devices to the world. It's available in millions of devices and of millions of locations, and it's easy to set up and use,” he adds on.

As being put by Eric Yang, Country Manager – India at Edimax Technologies, today Wi-Fi technology has emerged to be a pre-eminent technology. The requirement of Wi-Fi is increasing due to its cost-effectiveness and easy availability.

“Its quality, functionality and the performance has created the need from all over the world. Wi-Fi makes the traffic clean and quick. Wi-Fi does everything from pushing of e-mail to streaming videos, linking to the video conference, keeps the user connected with the work and the group,” he adds on.

The Wifi Advantage “The proliferation of Wi-Fi-enabled devices and continued expansion of broadband services provide a solid foundation for growth in home Wi-Fi adoption. Wi-Fi household penetration rate in India stood at 2.5 percent in 2011 and is expected to grow further. Today, the majority of devices include wireless technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as standard, offering seamless connectivity. Now that these technologies are commonplace, manufactures are looking towards more innovative options to attract buyers. New wireless technologies will trump existing ones by providing faster speeds, easier connectivity and seamless communication among devices,” Nafis Kazim from Shyam Networks explains.

The popularity of wifi is a testament primarily to their convenience, cost efficiency, and ease of integration with other networks and network components.

• Convenience – The wireless nature of such networks allows users to access network resources from nearly any convenient location within their primary networking environment (a home or office). With the increasing saturation of laptop-style computers, this is particularly relevant.

• Mobility – With the emergence of public wireless networks, users can access the internet even outside their normal work environment. Most chain coffee shops, for example, offer their customers a wireless connection to the internet at little or no cost.

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• Productivity – Users connected to a wireless network can maintain a nearly constant affiliation with their desired network as they move from place to place. For a business, this implies that an employee can potentially be more productive as his or her work can be accomplished from any convenient location.

• Deployment – Initial setup of an infrastructure-based wireless network requires little more than a single access point. Wired networks, on the other hand, have the additional cost and complexity of actual physical cables being run to numerous locations (which can even be impossible for hard-to-reach locations within a building).

• Expandability – Wireless networks can serve a suddenlyincreased number of clients with the existing equipment.

In a wired network, additional clients would require additional wiring.

• Cost – Wireless networking hardware is at worst a modest increase from wired counterparts.

This potentially increased cost is almost always more than outweighed by the savings in cost and labor associated to running physical cables.

Talking about the advantages of WiFi, Dhananjay Ganjoo from Juniper Networks says that Wi-Fi technology offers enterprises and its users many benefits like any-where computing, portability, flexibility, and increased productivity.

Some of the key benefits for the end-user using Wi-Fi are • Mobility – Wi-Fi provides mobility. Employees are no longer confined to their desk or a particular place and aren’t restricted to using legacy (Ethernet) cables to connect to the internet • Efficiency – Wi-Fi enables employees and authorized users to connect to the company’s Internet network using designated WEP/WPA keys without any technical difficulties. The computer keeps the connection settings, just as Wi-Fi is activated once the computer recognizes the Wi-Fi signal and connects automatically each time • Reduced cost - Installing a Wi-Fi involves far lesser cost than traditional network cables and reduces overhead costs (TCO) As explained by Shishir Singh from Dell, more and more devices are being launched that include Wi-Fi functionality as well as cellular connectivity. The key benefits of Wi-Fi are to MOBILITY

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enable wireless access to deliver voice, data, and video streams with no cables attached. “Some offer connectivity over an area as large as your desktop whilst others can cover a medium-sized office space. Wireless technology can offer businesses more flexible and inexpensive ways to send and receive data,” he adds on.

Other benefits include: • Eliminates Clutter: Users don’t need to carry cables or adaptors in order to access office networks and also eliminates wiring for PC’s like switches, adapters, plugs, pins, and connectors.

• Increased efficiency: Enabling users to carry portable Wi-Fi devices giving them the ability to take calls anywhere, anytime and deliver quick and easy access to information • Greater flexibility and mobility for users: office-based wireless workers can be networked without sitting at dedicated PCs. Enables users to enjoy the advantages of the Internet in public places such as lobbies, cafes, universities, hotels, airports, and many other common areas.

Wi-Fi also supports roaming: so you can walk around a building from one access point to another.

• Reduced costs: Wireless networks are, in most cases, cheaper to install and maintain.

• Easier Upgrading: One of the main advantages of a wireless network is that you can add another computer (up to the maximum number stated on the hub or router) more easily than on a wired network. This reduces the cost of upgrading or adding to your computers if you use an external company to setup or maintain it.

According to Jason Xu from TP-Link, Wi-Fi networks use radio technologies called 802.11 to provide secure, reliable, fast wireless connectivity. “If you are new to the technology, you'll love how it enables you to connect on the go and share an internet connection at home. And if you have used Wi-Fi for a while now, you might like to find out more about how it can connect a large variety of productivity and entertainment tools,” he explains.

Rajesh Sahore from Aries Networks says that secure Access to information is serving the need to be connected to the digital world, even when on the move is probably the primary benefit for the end user using WiFi technology. “WiFi as a technology is prevalent not only in data and networking terms, but also in the Voice world wherein the 3G and soon to be launched

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LTE are Wireless Technologies used for information access on smartphones and tablets.” He adds on.

Elaborating on the advantages that WiFi is bringin for the end user community today, Eric Yang from Edimax says that WiFi gives freedom of movement which can be carried anywhere and anytime provides mobility to the user to continue their connectivity with their work group.

“It is compatible with all the devices, fast and better accessing of data, cost saving, requires less space and there is no complexity of cabling in and around the premises. More than one user can get the benefit of connectivity without any additional cost,” he explains on.

Challenges for WiFi “With a focus to provide better and seamless access to broadband, we, at Shyam Networks are constantly innovating and improvising our products to help enable and empower the consumers with an unmatched quality and a promise to deliver superior fast broadband services. Our range of pocket

routers will surely help towards providing seamless broadband connectivity for those who are always on the move and need broadband connectivity,” Nafis Kazim from Shyam Networks elaborates.

For a given networking situation, wireless LANs may not be desirable for a number of reasons. Most of these have to do with the inherent limitations of the technology.

• Security – To combat this consideration, wireless networks may choose to utilize some of the various encryption technologies available. Some of the more commonly utilized encryption methods, however, are known to have weaknesses that a dedicated adversary can compromise.

• Range – The typical range of a common 802.11g network with standard equipment is on the order of tens of meters. While sufficient for a typical home, it will be insufficient in a larger structure. To obtain additional range, repeaters or additional access points will have to be purchased. Costs for these items can add up quickly.

Talk with Ramesh Ramnath As WiFi is set to push networking limits to the fullest, Cisco is all geared up to provide its expertise in this segment. Ramesh Ramnath, Technology Leader, Service Providers, Cisco India & SAARC talks about the company’s growing impetus on the Wifi side.

How do you look at the WiFi Technology today?

Mobile network traffic is growing exponentially, and service providers must manage their networks efficiently to meet consumer demand. The technology evolution of radio access networks is limited by the laws of physics, and significant growth in radio frequency (RF) efficiency can no longer be expected. Long-Term Evolution (LTE) radio access is reaching the limits of Shannon's law, the spectrum available for mobile data applications is limited, and the only solution for increasing overall mobile network capacity is to increase the carrierto-interference ratio while decreasing cell size and deploying small cell technologies.

Wi-Fi, one of the small cell technologies, appeals to many operators as a cost-effective mean of offloading large amounts of mobile data traffic while delivering a variety of new services. It offers these features: • Widespread existing deployments • Availability of user devices that support the technology • Cost efficiency • Capability to address new users and devices without mobile subscription (without a subscriber identity module [SIM]) • Globally available spectrum capacity • Standards availability for integration into mobile core networks In a nutshell, Wi-Fi holds a very important place for the service providers to

be able to provide a viable and efficient way to offload subscriber traffic.

What are the Key drivers of WiFi today ?

Some of the factors that are driving dramatic growth in the Wi-Fi marketplace: • Our research shows that providers can expect mobile data traffic to increase 26-times over the 5 years between 2010 and 2015, and much of that growth is coming from video traffic.

• This coupled with the lack of available new spectrum and the inability for mobile providers to quickly and

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•

What are the key benefits for the end user while using WiFi? Wi-Fi networks are an essential component to meet the ever-growing demand for mobile broadband. As per Cisco Visual Index (VNI) there will be 2 billion network devices in India by 2016. By the sheer size we can easily envisage the high importance of an offload strategy. Wi-Fi is the most cost-effective and technologically mature solution for the same. As for as end users are concerned, Wi-Fi has the capability to address new users and devices without mobile subscription and can operate in an unregulated free spectrum band. Also Wi-Fi provides significantly superior bandwidth as compared to other technologies. Moreover, significant percentage of smartphones comes with inbuilt Wi-Fi chips, the end users stand

Ramesh Ramnath, Technology Leader, Service Providers, Cisco India & SAARC 14 | August 2012

•

cost-effectively add new macro-cell sites, you can see that the ability to offload data is very attractive.

At the same time, there is a growing acceptance of Wi-Fi as it becomes ubiquitous in all kinds of devices, from smart phones and tablets to televisions and even automobiles.

And finally, we’re seeing wireless usage shift indoors. This has traditionally been the hardest place to cover with a macro radio, but as end-users become more comfortable with the technology, providers are finding new ways to offload traffic while their subscribers are at home or in the office.

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• Reliability – Like any radio frequency transmission, wireless networking signals are subject to a wide variety of interference, as well as complex propagation effects that are beyond the control of the network administrator.

• Speed – The speed on most wireless networks (typically 1-54 Mbps) is far slower than even the slowest common wired networks (100Mbps up to several Gbps). However, in specialized environments, the throughput of a wired network might be necessary.

According to Juniper’s Dhananjay Ganjoo, today enterprises have to constantly ensure that the mobile computing environment is transparent and secure at any campus or branch location in the enterprise, and from any external location with the BYOD penetration.

“There are two critical challenges that need to be addressed in the enterprise space – • User-centric security - Security risks are involved in

to benefit from the technology. There is also increasing coverage of Hotspots for endusers to benefit from the technology.

What kind of challenges is this technology facing today?

Some of the bottlenecks that Wi Fi technology is facing today are: • Low power level: the de-licensed 2.4 GHz devices have to be restricted to 100 milliwatts of radiated power output (26 dBm) • Coverage area restriction placed "within the single contiguous campus of an individual, duly recognized organization or institution".

• Hotspots in public areas still need licenses from the Wireless Planning & Coordination Wing (WPC) and violations are illegal and liable for a penalty • The outdoor use of the same spectrum requires a license • Spill over of signals to a public area (like roads or streets) is liable to punishment For widespread adoption of Wi Fi, these challenges should be addressed so as to provide better services to the end user.

What kind of penetration does WiFi has in India?

WiFi is widely deployed and available in most of the Enterprises. Apart from this, large populations of residential users have also deployed WiFi. Apart from this there are several Service Providers who have started deploying this solution today , especially in public places and hotspots.

With the increasing number of smart device users in India, wherein WiFI is the preferred mode of connectivity, usage is MOBILITY

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operating Wi-Fi networks as networks are open to intruders and hackers who may cause unwanted consequences to an organization’s resources. Enterprises and large organizations are continuously working to understand and mitigate the risks associated with this technology against unforeseen threats, delays and unwanted losses. In an enterprise Wi-Fi network, the technological reasons for security challenges come from the fact that wireless signals propagate beyond the physical areas and boundaries of the organizations, which, if intercepted, can lead to misuse of critical data and information by unauthorized personnel • Managing independent mobile devices connecting to the network - Legacy campus and branch networks are increasingly strained from the increased number of wireless devices entering the enterprise and the inability of the network infrastructure to meet such demands.”

And especially in today’s scenario, with networks allowing

bound to increase.

How does the future look for WiFi in India?

There is a huge upside in the opportunities for the growth of wireless products and solutions in India since the market is maturing and growing, people are realizing the benefit of a pervasive wireless network and more mobile applications to be available for consumers benefit.

Internet is increasingly becoming pervasive and India is one of the fastest growing internet markets in the world. As per Cisco VNI, there will be two billion networked devices in India by 2016 and internet traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 64% between 2011 to 2016. Wi-Fi is one of the strongest solutions to accelerate the growth of data and video.

With limited spectrum allocated, in India, to be shared between voice and data, WiFi will be used to offload the congested air interface, which is likely to be jam-packed very quickly- because mobile Internet data traffic is set to grow 58-fold between 2011 to 2016, at a CAGR of 126% (VNI).

The Government of India is also planning build a broadband network for e-Panchayats in a bid to address various aspects of broadband services for panchayats.

This along with the availability of affordable small devices will fuel the growth of WiFi We also see great potential for Wi-Fi adoption within the enterprise segment, educational institutes, government, healthcare and retail sectors, although the response to public hotspots have been tepid.

With rationalization of tariffs, lowering cost of handhelds and proliferation of smart hand-held devices, the adoption is certainly set to grow. www.mobilityindia.com

Ideally what are some of the biggest consumers of WiFi in the enterprise community?

The enterprise market in India has been one of the primary consumers of Wi-Fi. Most of the Wi-Fi growth is happening in enterprises because that’s where the largest concentration of mobile computer users is. Enterprises are also adopting the VDI/ VXI technologies and are encouraging their workforce on the BYOD concept.

Do you have any WiFi Plans on the product front?

Cisco has been the leading innovator in the WiFi space and has constantly provided our customers with various feature enhancements. Wi-Fi has created a large market opportunity for operators, and that opportunity is attracting increasing competition. As a result, as providers attempt to secure locations and launch services, the race to capture this opportunity will go to the swift.

Given this scenario, there are four important ways Cisco helps service providers capture the Wi-Fi opportunity with Cisco Service Provider Wi-Fi (SP WiFi), a carrier-grade solution for mass market deployments.

• Carrier class solution by design: Cisco SP Wi-Fi is tailored to meet the needs of service providers, providing cost-effective, small cell coverage and capacity to meet the scale and quality required by mobile data users today.

Cisco has been designing service provider Wi-Fi networks for years, and our advanced products reflect attention to design detail needed in real-world deployments.

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access to a rapidly growing number of employees and customers, enterprises must have strong and flexible identity management system to ensure appropriate access while ensuring security for business critical applications information.

“Juniper’s Simply Connected solution is an integrated portfolio of resilient switching, security, and wireless, products that allows simple and secure access to business-critical information and collaboration. The solution helps in securing the device, the network edge and the application by avoiding data leakage on an ongoing basis without compromising technology requirements to reduce the support burden in the face of new devices, security, reliability and network performance,” he adds on.

Speaking about the challenges of WiFi, Shishir Singh from Dell says that even though Wi-Fi products are useful, there are still some downfalls that must be stated in order to get a firm grasp on exactly what Wi-Fi wireless LAN technologies are composed of. “Wi-Fi is designed for medium-range data transfers and most versions works up to about 250-300 feet away from the access point indoors, and about 1,000 feet away outdoors, and with more distance between your computer/laptop and the access point, the speed and the quality falters tremendously. Another challenge for Wi-Fi products is their security system. The Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is the common wireless encryption standard which is easily broken even when configured accurately.

(Wikipedia, Wi-Fi) To counteract this problem, however, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) has been established, but still a complete secure wi-fi enabled system is not guaranteed,” he explains.

Talking about the challenges being faced by WiFi, Jason Xu from TP-Link says that Wi-Fi products operate over radio waves, in the same way as your cell phone, garage door opener, TV, radio, GPS navigation system or microwave. Each of these types of products operates in a specific slice, or frequency band, of the radio spectrum.

“Wi-Fi products operate in the 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands.

These bands are designated as "license-free", which indicates that individuals may use products designed for these bands without a government license, such as those that are granted to TV or radio transmissions within licensed bands. Because the Wi-Fi bands are "license free", it becomes more important for manufacturers to ensure that their products pass the standards of interoperability set by the Wi-Fi certifications. Additionally, because they also share these bands with non-Wi-Fi products, such as remote control toys, certification testing ensures that Wi-Fi products are good neighbors and will not interfere with

signals from these devices and vice-versa.” He adds on.

Speaking about the challenges pertaining to WiFi usage, Rajesh Sahore from Aries Networks, says that most of the WiFi devices, be it your cordless phone or your wireless routers use the same 2.4GHz frequency band, due to which the coverage range of the wireless products reduce drastically due to channel conflicts. Hence, when a user has more wireless products in the office/home the range of all his/her get affected, thus causing blind spots and even no coverage areas.

“Hopefully, with the introduction of dual band wireless products, which have the ability to operate at 2 different frequency levels i.e. 2.4/5 GHz, these conflicts can be reduced and better distance coverages can be achieved,” he adds on.

Talking about the challenges of WiFi technology, Eric Yang from Edimax says that Wi-Fi in the SOHO & SMB segment is not facing many challenges but there are still significant challenges to meet enterprise users’ requirements for voice quality and functionality, plus the enterprise IT managers’ requirements for reliability, scalability, interoperability and security.

WiFi in India The enterprise market in India has been one of the primary consumers of Wi-Fi owing to its dense concentration of mobile computer users which has enabled and continued its positive growth story. Enterprise Wi-Fi networks have now become the norm in large organizations, considering that they were earlier usedprimarily to complement wired networks, and insome cases for building-building connectivity. Finally, the consumption of Wi-Fi enabled devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops etc.) has considerably shot-up in both SMB and large enterprises in recent years and continues to drive wireless traffic.

“In India, WiFi penetration is very low compared to the west and other Asian countries. But lately, a lot of players are moving into this space. Wi-Fi has become a mainstream wireless technology which provides Internet access at home to a wide variety of consumer electronics and mobile devices. The proliferation of Wi-Fi-enabled devices and continued expansion of broadband services provide a solid foundation for growth in home Wi-Fi adoption,” Shishir Singh from Dell explains.

Over the last three years, wifi has increasingly become the medium of choice for connecting to the internet for high bandwidth applications such as youtube, social networking sites and large file downloads. With WiFi technology, it is approximately 25-30 times cheaper to transport data over the internet compared to 3G. Hence such a technology plays a

Ixia and Bajaj Capital are some of Juniper’s customers in the WiFi space Ixia: Juniper’s ‘wired-less’ campus network solutions for Ixia, leaders in converged IP services testing solutions, helped them in integrating their fixed and mobile network access into a seamless and highly-manageable fabric, enabling the company towards continued development of its R&D center in Kolkata. Juniper’s 'Simply Connected' vision for Ixia enabled it in combining a simplified wired network and high-density wireless solution to provide secure and device-agnostic connections.

Bajaj Capital: Juniper’s ‘wired-less’ campus network enabled Bajaj Capital, a financial planning and investment advisory firm to increase its network performance and availability, while increasing security and reducing its operating costs. The entire network infrastructure runs on Junos, which helped the company to simplify its management and apply fine-grained security and quality-of-service control across wired and wireless networks.

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Explaining the present and futuristic scenario for WiFi in India, Rajesh Sahore from Aries Networks says that WiFi penetration for data has been limited to larger cities and towns till now as WiFi was used only for last mile connectivity or for user access, however, with the increase in broadband reach due to 3G rollout, the penetration is set to increase exponentially.

“The demand for 3G routers and 3G modems have really gone up mutifold over the last 12 months period. The future of WiFi is definitely bright in India. More and more customers are preferring WiFi over standard Wired Connectivity, especially home consumers and SMEs as it gives them the flexibility of adds, moves and changes. To add to it enhancements in speed and security have made the WiFi a more obvious choice for customers.” He adds on.

Future of India’s WiFi “Wi-Fi is not new to India and is deployed in enterprises, campuses and SOHO sectors. The Indian Enterprise Wi-Fi market (including WLAN hardware, systems integration and software services, not including embedded devices, laptops) is on track for a huge growth curve which is being triggered by an increased usage ofWi-Fi enabled devices in the workplace coupled with IT exposure to emerging sectors in the country. (E.g. Retail Sector).

The necessary market drivers are in place to propel the growth, development and deployment of Wi-Fi into a mainstream technology across the country,” Dhananjay Ganjoo from Juniper Networks explains.

As multi-national companies and Indian corporations continue to grow their Indian offices (expected growth in MNC hiring in tech sector to double in 2007) and global work-practices begin to be seen in India, the always-on connected professional is increasingly visible.

Flexihours and home-office culture has set-in in the tech cities making laptop usage and home Wi-Fi a necessity. The small business enterprises are contributing significantly to the mobile workforce by becoming the fastest growing segment in laptop consumption.

According to Nafis Kazim from Shyam networks, WiFi is seriously being taken by the enterprise community. “It is one technology that is set to drive communications needs of an enterprise to the next level. Today there is a growth of voice over Wifi network is helping enterprise push a lot of their applications on the Wifi environment. Moving forward this trend is set to grow even bigger and create better opportunities for the enterprise users. For us SIs, Building Solutions, Real Estate Players, Retail chains, Hypermarkets, Airports, mobile Operators are our key customers.” He adds on.

As described by Jason Xu from TP-Link, Wi-Fi is not new to India and has been deployed in enterprises, campuses and SOHO sectors for several years. “However, now more than ever before, it is clear that all the enablers for creating a sustained Wi-Fi network will emerge. Technology upgrades we’ll see within the next year or so will make WiFi much faster, smarter and more efficient in how it distributes signals. It’ll be so fast, and integrated into so many devices, that you may finally get to dump a lot of those cables cluttering your living room,” he adds on.

Discussing the India opportunity for WiFi, Eric Yang from MOBILITY

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Edimax says that the internet penetration in India is a little higher than 10% of the total population in India. So as far as internet penetration is concerned it is still at its very early stage but the market is bound to improve in the years to come.

“The future of Wi-Fi in India can be looked at from different dimensions and overall it is very optimistic and healthy. The future of Wi-Fi will depend on first internet penetration, Knowledge of the end-users on the advantages of using Wi-Fi, acceptance of Gadgets in the market which comes with Wi-Fi options like Smart TV, ipad, Smart phones etc. Enterprise community requirement of Wi-Fi is already much matured and largest demand comes from corporate and SMB,” he explains.

The WiFi Bet – What Vendors have in store Operating predominantly in the broadband space, Gurgaon based Shyam Networks is fully committed towards enabling a broadband driven ecosystem and Wifi is surely a big part of this broadband scheme. “Our products like the pocket router, or tablets are all Wifi enabled and designed to push the broadband envelope of the country to the next level. We are the first end to end B2C Broadband brand which have product to fill in 3 buckets of access Enable & Experience. Further being operator agnostic we offer customers a choice to pick the operator & data plan of his choice. Our key product line include tablets, Routers, Data cards, 3G Pocket routers, Outdoor CPES & switches,” he adds on.

Betting big on WiFi Digisol is coming up with number of WiFi Products this year in addition to existing product range.

1) Wireless Repeater:- Which will enhance the Wi-Fi coverage (DG-WR3001N) 2) Pocket Size Wireless Broadband Router (DG-BR1000Nu) 3) Wireless Wi-Fi Router (Especially for 5 to 10 user network) 4) Wireless Wi-Fi Drive (For sharing the Network drives and internet among the users) When it comes to putting WiFi on work for the end user community, all of Dell’s Notebook range are wi-fi enabled and even its All in One desktops have WiFi card readers. The XPS 13 & 14 ultrabooks are equipped with Intel® Rapid Start technology and Intel® Smart Connect technology for faster responsiveness and connectivity and enterprise-friendly features to intersect the design and performance desired by consumers with the security and services required by IT departments.

Delivering WiFi for the end user community, TP-LINK is focusing on dual band products and next generation WiFi standard 802.11ac products now, which offer higher bandwidth and expanded signal coverage. The company is also working on portable products to make wireless routers and access points more convenient for end-users to carry and use, and even giving users the ability to share 3G/4G connections.

“Aries Networks is a company formed with the sole focus of bringing in "Tech-novative" products to it's customers, predominantly from the Wireless Technology arena. Our initial product offering in the portfolio itself consists of the Aries Broadband Router and the Aries Range Booster. While the current offering is networking oriented, we intend to bring wireless products and solutions which step out of the realm of being just connectivity devices and make them multi-application oriented,” explains, Rajesh Sahore from Aries Networks.

www.mobilityindia.com

August 2012 | 17

8/21/2012 2:35:09 PM