Technology Adoption
Technology adoption trends in the Indian market are no different from global trends. On the copper medium, Cat 6 continues to rule the roost while Cat 5 E adoption is declining. The surprising pick up in Cat 5A sales is attributed to the market opening up in class B and C cities. Cat 6 UTP is still the dominant technology with Cat 6A gaining a couple of percentage points, as this medium can work in higher frequency range, remaining immune to external noise. Cat 6A STP implementations were limited to datacenter projects especially in the network backbone. 10G over copper will remain another area of interest.

Another trend that has been gaining momentum in India is adoption of physical layer management solutions for intelligent cabling solutions. India is an early adopter of new technologies and in cases of Intelligent Infrastructure Management solution (IIMs) it even leads over other mature markets. Technologies such as TERA, ZMAX, blade patch cords and intelligent cabling systems, which provide optimum utilization and efficiency, besides real-time management, will gain momentum.

In terms of fiber adoption, while enterprise sales have not been very high, they still contributed to a considerable amount of the market. One of the major driving factors for this is telecom vertical gradually deploying FTTH. Service providers like Bharti Airtel, BSNL, MTNL, and Reliance Communications are either on the pilot runs or on initial deployments of FTTH. Vendors like DigiLink, ADC Krone, and Tyco Electronics have end-to-end solutions in this space. In fiber medium, multi-mode fiber would now go OM3 (laser optimized) as default. In other words, we will see 10G more than 200 m.

Today's telecommunication buzzword for any FTTP network is future proofing. Without examining future bandwidth needs and determining winning technologies, service providers face some major challenges in putting such networks at the right place for the first time. The unpredictable performance of xDSL overload coils, splices, varying gauges and conditions of the copper network produce costly lessons in network flexibility. FTTP provides the opportunity for service providers to deploy new subscribers with a clean slate. Together, they promise to build a new network that provide day-to-day services while adding the flexibility to handle future access technologies.

As predicted, GPON promises to dominate the access market by offering a bandwidth boost and enabling higher split ratios. GPON's entry as the latest PON flavor is also coinciding with the challenges service providers face in delivering high speed, high bandwidth, packaged services to businesses and residential customers. The pressure is on them to make their networks GPON ready from the central office to the outside plant.

There is already a considerable motivation for service providers to migrate their networks to GPON. First and foremost, is the ability to offer their customers a much larger variety of services today and for the future as well. The technology, particularly in video is making huge strides in the home entertainment segment including - HDTV, gaming, teleconferencing, and other high bandwidth applications. Today's and tomorrow's enhanced services, interoperability requirements, use of enhancement bands, and the promise of higher split ratios and increased capacity are demanding the service providers to use GPON as the best upgradation path. While service providers strive to meet the challenges of upgrading their FTTP networks to GPON, vendors should seek to make a migration too.

Strategic Play
With recession on every vendor's mind, businesses adopt different strategies to expand their market share. One of the structured cabling majors, DigiLink plans a two-fold sales strategy. One strong point that it already poses is to reach SME and SOHO customers. This is processed through its present regional distribution channels with good amount of pre-sales training on its products as well as latest technology trends. Secondly, now it has strategic national system integrators and has identified list of corporate and institutional customers. ADC Krone is focusing more on its global key accounts, datacenter, telecom, government verticals and Professional Architects, Consultants and Engineers Program community this year. On the carrier side, its key initiatives will be providing solutions to service providers who are migrating to fiber in their central office, and FTTx network architectures. Wireless, broadcast and entertainment are also its key verticals. Realty sectors are its new focus, as builders and constructors now have introduced a concept called 'ready-to-occupy' offices.

Tyco will remain focused on the channel market, as it has invested a lot of time and resources in training channel partners. Its focus is to enhance geographical reach across cities and verticals through new alliances in the class B and C cities and signing up new partners. Molex will work closely with large tier I system integrators right from inception and design stage.

Nexans in India is still in the growth phase and will aggressively position itself to address some key focused verticals like the telecom, BFSI, government, hospitality, and infrastructure projects in the months to follow. CDT Belden's main target this year will be airports, hospitality, oil and gas, metros, IT/ITES, BFSI, process automation, higher education, healthcare, etc.

Dax Networks will focus on verticals like government, defense, education, and corporate. Dax traditionally has been in to the government business. That is one segment which is not much affected by the slowdown. So Dax's revenue also has not been much affected.

Siemon will focus on government, IT/BPO, BFSI, telecom, education, financial institutions and health verticals. It intends to enter the market with latest product and solution offerings.

With its world class products, solutions, and expertise, Leviton, North America's leading structured cabling manufacturer, will initially focus primarily on the government sector which still offers lot of growth potential. The company will also focus on enterprises and hospitality as other key verticals in the current fiscal. Leviton provides a comprehensive solution for copper, fiber and power for networking solutions and datacenters with an exhaustive product portfolio in the industry.

A relatively new entrant, Leviton intends to bring its products, solutions and expertise to the Indian market. Leviton provides solution for copper, fiber and power for networking solutions and datacenters, as networking technologies have evolved from Category 5 to 5e, to 6 and now to 6a which supports 10Gbtransmission requirements. As the demand for datacenter products has grown, one of the key issues installers need to deal with is how to quickly get networking components installed within tight windows of time for networks that must be up and active 24/7.  Leviton's pre-tested plug-n-play fiber solutions with pre-terminated fiber trunks provide fast and easy installations or reconfigurations in the datacenter environment.

In terms of services, it offers free local technical support to its customers and end users and offers local stocking facility. It plans to provide value added service of design and support in developing the datacenter. Apart from this, the company also plans to offer training to the onsite datacenter personnels to allow them the opportunity to learn side-by-side, with the ultimate goal of handing over these areas of activities to them.

The Road Ahead
No doubt, another tough year is ahead. The Indian structured cabling market, as most of the world market, is undergoing a challenging phase, but it has not hit the rock bottom. Some segments like IT/ITeS and BFSI, which contributed to higher structured cabling growth, will not have the same potential in the ongoing fiscal. While investments in the IT/ITeS and BFSI sectors will be low, there will be some demand from the government and telecom sectors. Infrastructure related projects like railways, power, roads, and airports will drive the market growth. Apart from this, education, hospitality, healthcare, large datacenters, knowledge centers, and disaster recovery centers will continue to grow.

The irony is that there are more players in the market than the number of opportunities available. This is leading to fierce competition causing competing vendors to drop prices to gain entry into the accounts. This in turn would drive down the value of projects. Some industry experts even tend to predict that the market may actually shrink by approximately 15-25% in FY 2009-10. There will be increased focus on Cat 6A and MM – OM3 cabling products in datacenters in FY 2009-10.

If we look back, the kind of shift the data traffic witnessed in the last two decades, we will come to a conclusion that information transfer speeds are increasing at least one order of magnitude per decade. We have seen LAN speeds increase from 10, to 100, to 1000, and now to 10,000 Mbps in less than thirty years! Now IEEE and TIA standards task groups are working on even higher speeds such as 40 and 100 Gbps. To sum up in a single sentence, though the current phase is tough, the future will be bright, so cheers!

Kannan K
kannan@cybermedia.co.in