With consolidation in the telecommunications market taking place at a rapid rate, the opportunity for increased competition increases. <\/p>\n
This is forcing telecommunications operators to find key differentiators to meet customers’ requirements, other than simply installing technology to address problematic areas for customers.<\/p>\n
"We are seeing a lot of focus on speed of deployment," says Rajeev Sinha, head of products and solutions for Neotel’s Enterprise Group. "This requirement is gaining importance among customers and effectively driving their decision-making when it comes to choice of telecommunications provider. In addition to that, customers are increasingly focusing on multiple service providers to provide effective redundancy – when one network fails, the other is still in operation, ensuring that they can continue with their daily operations. <\/p>\n
"Wireless technologies such as WiMAX 802.16d (fixed) and Cambridge Broadband VectaStar provide the opportunity to roll out connectivity to customers in much shorter turnaround times," Sinha adds. Neotel has an established national long distance optical fibre network and is currently rolling out metropolitan optical fibre networks to take services closer to the customer, he says. "With WiMAX and VectaStar as last-mile access circuit options, we can connect the customer in less time than optical fibre installations."<\/p>\n
Neotel already has the regulatory framework and network infrastructure in place to deliver wireless access technologies to market, which means it can implement these value-add services to its customers immediately, Sinha continues. "A further benefit of the technology is the fact that the environmental impact is limited – due to the wireless access medium, no trenching of pavements is required and the physical installation at the client site is small and unobtrusive." <\/p>\n
The wireless access technologies will be provided from base stations that are back-hauled or underpinned by Neotel’s fibre network and not other wireless networks. "This eliminates potential bottlenecks due to limited wireless back-haul capacity," Sinha concludes.<\/p>\n