K Bala Chandran, managing director, India and SAARC, Krone Communications

K Bala Chandran

What new is happening in structured cabling business in terms of technology and new category of cables?
Intelligent cabling systems are the hot favorite today. As we see the emergence of multi-location facilities, large campuses, and buildings, the importance of effective management of valuable network resources has become very critical. The need to troubleshoot remotely has gone up considerably. The latest in structured cabling systems are the new features that include higher security to the user and a stronger interoperability platform.

Even after so much hype, 10G adoption rate has been not very high. Why?
Though the adoption rate might be low for 10G, it is happening now. Just like people are moving from Cat5E to Cat6 for better performance and higher capacity, people would adopt 10G. There are two things standing in wide spread recognition of 10G over copper. One is the ratification of the standard itself and other is the absence of ports and switches. With companies like Solar Flair and Foundary making move towards this, ports should be in the market very soon. And we are expecting the standards to be ratified by 2006. Today high capacity customers like data centers are buying 10G and as volume picks up cost of 10G electronics would come down giving it the necessary punch.

India is a price-sensitive market. How do price and new technology go together?
In structured cabling industry, quality of installation influences the performance of any good product. With BiCSi training and education to installers and integrators and the tremendous response to such organizations is an indication of awareness about installation skills here. Trained and skilled installers are getting recognized along with the good products in India. But it is equally true that in India cost is a bigger consideration than standards. But this will change with improvements in skill sets and as people realize the importance of a good product.

What is the status of power over Ethernet in India? What is happening globally in this field?
The growth in PoE is directly linked to the rapid growth in IP-based applications (telephony and video). Globally the groundwork is already laid for PoE because the vast majority of businesses have Category 5 LAN that can accept PoE with no changes and also because LAN cabling is increasingly available in a number of common work.