If the seeds of 802.11b based wireless LAN (WLAN) or Wi-Fi were sown during 2002–03, it grew its roots in the Indian enterprise data equipment market in FY 2003–04. The kind of growth, though on a small base, that WLAN registered in FY 2003–04 speaks for itself. According to VOICE&DATA estimates, the Indian WLAN market reached Rs 51.5 crore in in FY 2003–04 from a mere Rs 12 crore in FY 2002–03. This amounted to a whopping 329 percent growth.

The biggest driver of this growth was the growing acceptability of wireless in the enterprise environment, aided by an increased awareness of the benefits of wireless and the more than 100 percent drop in prices of WLAN access points. The growing penetration of Wi-Fi enabled laptops also encouraged the adoption of wireless.

V&D estimates CyberMedia Research

In the previous years security concerns inhibited wireless deployment, especially in the large enterprises. However, in FY 2003–04 there was a strong adoption of wireless in MNCs, medium and large Indian enterprises, the hospitality sector (mostly 5-star hotels and a few 4-star ones), educational campuses, and manufacturing companies. While enterprises in these segments used WLAN as a complimentary network to their existing wired LANs, small and new office setups often installed WLAN as their primary network. In the public hotspots segment, there weren't any significant deployments except the ones by Barista coffee shops and Sify.

Among the vendors, Cisco was the market leader in terms of value. D-Link led in terms of units sold and number of deployments. Dax was the third significant vendor. Among the new entrants were Buffalo, Compex, Linksys, 3Com, and Netgear. Of these, Linksys (now acquired by Cisco) represented Cisco's entry in the SOHO markets, as it realized that the SOHO-home user market for WLAN was as important as the enterprise segment. Linksys, launched in India in November 2003, targeted the low-end of the market, while Cisco's own Aironet series of access points was meant for mid to large enterprises.

As awareness spreads about the benefits of wireless, more enterprises are likely to deploy it. Until now WLAN has been used only for data, or more precisely for wireless Internet access within a building or campus. However, WLAN will very soon be good enough for voice and video applications too.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey