Author
Bill Walter
CommScope’s Navin Vohra, vice president of sales, Asia-Pacific, recently did an interview with tele.net.in about our presence in the Indian telecom infrastructure market and future plans. Parts of that interview are included here; use the link to access the full article.How has been your experience in the Indian market? What are the key milestones achieved by the company?
The Indian market has changed considerably in the past decade. Two years ago, the telecom sector was subdued and mobile network operators were reducing their capital expenditure in line with lower profitability.
In contrast, today the telecom market is bullish in India. There is a positive attitude in the general business climate and amongst the customers as well. The new political leadership in India has had a positive impact and we are seeing a lot of enthusiasm for both our businesses – wireless and enterprise. With a stable government, the economy is starting to revive and we foresee economic growth for the years to come.
How has the Indian telecom infrastructure space evolved over the years? What opportunities do you see going forward?
The Indian telecom industry has come a long way in the past twenty years. It has transitioned from 2G voice led services to 3G data enabled services and now to hi-speed access – the 4G LTE network. India’s telecommunications industry stands to become one of the largest in the world and currently has over 900 million mobile subscribers.
With the growth in data use, there is a need for operators to not just improve coverage but also increase capacity in their networks. As we have in the past, we continue to work with our customers as they tackle the above challenges, supporting them with the necessary solutions and also sharing the knowledge we have built from working with countless operators globally.
What are the network challenges faced by the service providers in the Indian market? How does CommScope plan to address these?
Over the years, India has witnessed several technology migrations and CommScope has played a role in helping Indian operators through this technology evolution. About five years ago, operators got their licenses and spectrum for 3G and we have been working with the operators on their 3G builds. While 3G is continuing to expand, we now also have the arrival of 4G-LTE. This means that on top of implementing new technologies for 4G, operators also have to take on the challenge of increasing their network capacity to handle the increased data usage.
In terms of implementing new technology, with 2G, 3G and LTE networks all in operation at the same time, operators often find that they need to support all the frequency bands for the three technologies in the same cell site. We help operators manage this with our multi-band antennas that can cover multiple technologies and multiple frequency bands.
There are many other innovative ways that we’re helping operators to cope with network modernization. For example, we offer what is believed to be the world’s first pre-assembled tower-top in our SiteRise solution and also the SiteRise Standard Interface, which allows operators to connect a remote radio unit to the base station antenna in a simplified plug-and-play arrangement.
The capacity challenge can also be handled with multi-beam antennas. These antennas allow operators to sculpt each sector such that there is minimum overlap between sectors and interference is minimized – an important factor in interference-sensitive LTE networks.
We also offer other solutions that address passive intermodulation (PIM) and also Class 4 microwave backhaul antennas with low side lobes that enable more efficient spectrum usage.
