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Wireless technology is clearly the call of the day with India's telecommunications industry being dominated by huge growth in the wireless market. In the aftermath of technologies like 3G and WiMax, the demand will follow an upward growth.

In the Indian rural landscape, wireless is the obvious choice for operators and the critical success factors will be to improve coverage while reducing operational costs. For the rural hinterland, the challenges are big, and providing wireless connectivity to the customer premises is like winning only half the battle. At the heart of any well designed wireless deployment is a reliable, diverse, and robust backhaul network. Optimizing the network with the antennas-which are usually a de facto component in the wireless kit infrastructure-will be the focus.

When compared to the global market, India offers a huge opportunity with a teledensity (both fixed and wireless) and Internet density of less than 50%. According to research firms IDC and Business Monitor International, the overall Asia Pacific market is expected to reach 2.2 bn subscribers by 2012 and India, together with China, will continue to lead the growth.

Market Scenario
In the current scenario, many antenna technologies are catching up in the market. Antennas which support multi bands, high-gains and variable tilts have gained support and trust from the market. While tri-band antennas and MIMO technology based antennas are gaining mileage in the mobile and office segments, the industry is also witnessing higher performing antennas that have more control on radiation patterns to improve capacity, and decrease interference.

Multi-band antennas continue to be a hot issue as we see UMTS (3G) services being overlaid in traditional 2G frequency bands. Through customized filtering and combining solutions, site sharing of multiple technologies such as HSDPA, HSUPA, and EV-DO, 1 X, EDGE, WCDMA, iDEN, and GPRS with existing 2G networks is possible.

For India, the impending issuance of 3G licenses in this quarter means that operators need to ensure their existing infrastructure on 2G will be able to co-site and work with new infrastructure for 3G with minimal interference or even upgrading the existing infrastructure to support 3G.

In addition to 3G, operators are testing technologies such as WiMax and LTE, and, higher performing antennas to have more control on radiation patterns to improve capacity and decrease interference.

Another interesting development is the concealment solutions as India's urban areas put more and more focus on aesthetics. This involves hiding the antenna and associated filter infrastructure to be more aesthetically pleasing.

As such, there is a shift and increase in demand for multi-band antennas for site sharing and co-siting (a situation in which an operator wishes to locate equipment on a property, such as a building rooftop, that is already being used by another operator. But where the property is not wholly controlled, owned or leased by that other operator) and make sites ready for 3G.

Ruling Trends
The Asia Pacific region consists of highly fragmented markets with both developing and developed markets at different stages of technology evolution. There are a lot of opportunities as the needs and requirements of customers at different stages of technology evolution are varied. Developing markets focus more on cost, and require simple and cost effective infrastructure solutions like the 2G rollouts in India.

Analysts and experts say that the market is becoming more sophisticated because of the tendency of the industry players to focus on more highly engineered site architecture that could enable them to reap benefits such as reduced operation costs, improved coverage in rural areas, share multiple frequency bands, and greater control over their network.

The latest trend remains the customized filtering and combining solutions, site sharing of multiple technologies with existing 2G networks is possible.

New emerging verticals would be shipping and logistics, where wireless would play an important role. Also, for organizations in the retail segment can use wireless hand-helds to stock check, inventory check, price check (real time) to smoothen their front-end and back- end operations. Apart from these two verticals, rural connectivity (last mile connections) seems to mature up in terms of transferring triple play traffic.

Keeping the rural hinterland in mind, the main aim is to help customers with a rapid speed of deployment, and provide capabilities for remote management. Being able to accurately pinpoint and diagnose network performance issues and faults within increasingly complex networks, as well as monitor signal strength and capacity easily, along with a complete tool set to make network construction and development straightforward, is the only way to enhance the operating efficiency of a cellular network and ensure all users can connect to the next generation of services.

Developed markets on the other hand will focus on areas such as network optimization, 3G, site acquisitions, and green networks. A lot of testing and initial adoption of WiMax is taking place in India, Taiwan and Japan, as well as LTE trials and planning across APAC.

With the rise of mobile data services, the need to provide complete access is crucial and we have been seeing a lot of carriers looking to improve their in-building solutions and this requires the ability to provide a seamless end-to-end solution.

Pricing Issue
Antennas are usually considered a de facto component in the wireless kit infrastructure. Therefore, client expects that the cost of antennas should be practically 10% or less of the cost of the entire wireless kit. However, usually it is not the case as there is a considerable cost involved in making antennas. Therefore, nowadays manufacturers are trying to make in-built antennas with bare minimal form factor. Additionally, antennas with high gain are also holding prominence as they are very useful for outdoor connectivity.

Andrew Wireless antennas has an extensive range of 3G antennas, repeaters to help operators deploy high quality networks quickly. Moreover, customers can rely on their experience to integrate their 2G/3G feeder systems with diplexers and combiners which can help to reduce the number of radio antennas on a radio tower, reducing the weight and load from wind and potential ice, as well as the necessary size of the tower itself.

Andrew came up with the strategy 'Think global, act local', so as to boost the local production capabilities by significantly reducing freight and inventory costs and improving delivery time and availability.

License bands for operators are usually auctioned by DoT at a very high price. For example, currently there are auctions on licenses for 3G networks which is an upcoming technology in wireless mobile communications.

Pricing is also crucial with site kitting, for example, different parts of the RF sub-systems like cables, connectors, base stations, etc, are consolidated and shipped as a single batch to the actual cell site. In some cases, the parts are first fitted together and shipped to the site, which reduces the installation time at the actual site.

Outlook
High growth rates are expected for India, and the impending issuance of 3G licenses this year means that operators need to ensure that their existing infrastructure on 2G will be able to co-site and work with new infrastructure for 3G with minimal interference or even upgrading the existing infrastructure to support 3G.

From an operator's perspective the deployment of network hardware solutions that are scalable, future proof and capex efficient will be a critical factor of success in meeting consumer demands for coverage and performance. Operators need to ensure that customers can connect to new services in mature markets in order to increase their ARPU. In emerging and underdeveloped markets, the focus should be on how to cost effectively add customers to their networks, expand capacity in urban scenarios and coverage/reach in rural and remote areas, all cases where emerging technologies such as WiMax may very well play a fundamental role.

By supporting these next generation services, operators can maximize RoI within the network and leverage it for a competitive advantage. Nevertheless, they need to better manage increasingly complex networks to respond more effectively to customer demands, while at the same time become more streamlined with regard to their capital investment.

For these reasons, operators need to continually optimize their existing mobile networks. Making the most of available resources is not only common sense but also backed up by technological arguments. At present, many operators follow the standard path and address capacity problems by installing additional base stations at huge expenses-both in terms of outgoings, manhours and high opex. However, this solution can actually compound the problem. 3G is notoriously sensitive to interference and too many base stations in close proximity can disrupt and weaken the very signal they were supposed to strengthen.

By deploying the appropriate network optimization software at a fraction of the cost of a new base station site, mobile operators can avoid issues of network overload and dropped calls for their subscribers. The software, which includes performance management, traffic management and capacity support, allows network planners to fine tune capacity with the click of a mouse and understand underlying network infrastructure. It also plays a critical role in asset management by monitoring individual resources and the levels they are working at.

Service providers can run real-time environments to explore the most efficient and cost effective option to enhance coverage and capacity, as well as monitor core network in real-time to optimize the delivery of service. Benchmarking tools are increasingly being used to review and enhance subscriber experience, by allowing specific network problems to be fixed and providing records of competitive advantage over similar wireless services.

Green and Lean
Certainly, technologies such as LTE will be hot as they will appeal to operators looking at lowering cost of operations and increasing ARPUs. In addition, location based services will enable value added services to drive ARPUs as content can be tailored by location, social networking interaction enhanced, and information distribution controlled.

However, green IT will have a major impact on the market as well. Andrew remains committed to environmental protection through research, development, and manufacturing efforts that help customers implement energy saving and energy efficient solutions for their networks. For example, understanding the power requirements for the cell sites and the fact that wireless mobile networks are large emitters of greenhouse gases based on their need to be powered on.

As such, development of power amplifier technology is highly efficient and in the case of back-up power for sites, we use fuel cells (hydrogen refill) instead of batteries (which are not environmentally friendly and are difficult to recycle).

The additional benefits of hydrogen fuel cells include reliability, reduced opex for operators, and extended runtime for back-up power. This not only helps reduce the environmental impact of running a telecommunications network, but it also has a faster and more reliable turn-on response, reaching full power in less than a minute compared to three or four times of using diesel generators.

Network operators invest a large proportion of their funds into maintaining and powering their network. Apart from the cost savings, more and more emphasis is being placed on corporate social responsibility and its relation to brand perception. The desire to reduce power consumption within the network no longer simply comes from the stakeholders. Mounting pressures from consumer groups and environmental watchers means that operators must look forward and ensure the solutions they put in place to future-proof their networks are green and lean.

Robust Growth
The market is definitely promising in the years to come. However, one would see reduction in form factor including internal antennas supporting multiple bands, multi-technology (CDMA, GSM, Wi-Fi, WiMax) along with smart noise reduction and interference mitigation capability. Wireless antennas are expected to grow in the coming times with the demand from operators and enterprises going up with each passing year.

It seems that at least a 20% annual growth rate would be apt for it to qualify for on an exponential growth path.

Archana Singh
archanasi@cybermedia.co.in

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