The Wireless Landscape in India

Several novel technologies are coming up to explore wireless Local Area Network. The growth of wireless LAN is flourishing at the marvelous pace. The Wi-Fi is becoming a necessity for the incentive and complex implementation in enterprises. The technology offers the basic benefits to an industry like

•    Reduction in cost,

•    Improved performance,

•    Easy management,

•    Ease to add more users to the network,

•    Greater security etc.

The Indian Wireless LAN market has still not perched flags high. But, according to recent reports it is crawling well now a days and slowly it will show improvements. The market for the wireless products and applications is estimated to be approximately $120 million and 50 million for the wireless network gear alone for the year 2008 and is expected to grow at much faster rate of 70% in the coming years.

Gigantic companies like HP, ProCurve, Wipro etc, are shifting towards mobility. These companies have to carefully make a few considerations before going wireless. The first issue related to the well being of the industry is security. In WLAN the access is not limited to selective number of users. Now, it goes to unlimited number of users and as a result it becomes easy for the intruders to breach the security of the network.

Wireless network sometimes affects the quality of the data transfer. Because the interference enhances with distance that ultimately affects the quality of data transfer.

Another factor that affects the well being of wireless network is manageability. It is not an uncomplicated task to manage a wireless network, make alterations and troubleshoot the network problems with complex configuration.

The wireless networking is a big challenge as some external factors also affect its performance like the battery life of mobile devices, whether conditions and usage of licensed network.  The Indian market is dealing with all these issues and still constructing its way by breaking stones of obstacles.

With market growth and major enhancements happening in Wi-Fi space, future seems to be very bright. One of the major turning points has been the launch of 802.11n. According to recent market reports, In India, at present the 802.11g networking standard is common among big enterprises, the next eagerly awaited standard 802.11n is expected to make its way which will improve access speed and quality of data transfer. Conceptually, it offers six times the speed and less than three times the price along with longer distance coverage. Products based upon the new standard are likely to hit the market in 2009. Organizations are looking forward to welcome the new products.

The wireless network is implemented by National informatics Center (NIC), India. It is a premier Information Technology organization that provides IT solutions to the Government of India. NIC has set up a satellite-based nationwide computer communications network called NICNET. It has connected 1,400 nodes, connecting the national capital, state capitals and the district headquarters to one another.

Another implementation is done by Cisco; the company targets all the verticals along with end-users, home users and retail through Linksys.