In conversation with VARIndia, Ms Laura Howard, Chief Marketing Officer, ECI Telecom, reveals company’s plans for the Indian market.

Give a brief background about ECI Telecom?
ECI is a company focussed on innovation, efficient platforms and customer focus. We strive to provide our customers with the right tools in a cost-effective manner, to manage the transition from legacy – old–– technologies to new, next-generation ones, without disrupting services and revenue sources.

ECI is well positioned to help our customers in India to manage this transition.  We believe in partnering with our customers as they plan this transition, and our platforms are flexible enough to support them at their own pace.   We are agnostic in terms of technology and transition path, and will work with our customers on the best path of transition/migration that works for them. 

What are the product ranges you have right now?
ECI is a global provider of networking infrastructure, and we focus on broadband, data and optical networking. The XDM line of multi-service provisioning platform (MSPP) enables carriers to migrate their existing SDH/SONET metro access, aggregation and backbone networks to packet NG-SDH/SONET/MSPP network as well as enable deployment of WDM/ROADM infrastructure.

The BroadGate Series products are designed as metro access MSPP devices to be located as CPE at customer locations or as CLE in cell towers. They can also be deployed as cost-effective metro aggregation devices. The Hi-FOCuS is a flexible MSAN , which can be populated with any combination of xDSL, fiber and VoIP line cards, and provides Ethernet aggregation over a non-blocking architecture. The Hi-FOCuS can act as an IP-DSLAM, fiber OLT, VoIP gateway or full MSAN. As a VoIP gateway, it acts as an IMS-tuned MSAN, which also supports voice with the industry’s highest density non-blocking voice line card, or SIP-based VoIP.

ECI’s innovative CESR solution enables service providers to offer lucrative Ethernet-based business and residential services. Our Carrier Ethernet switch/routers 9000 Family provides the building blocks for the optimal Carrier Ethernet metro network infrastructure, offering highly reliable voice, data, video, and VPN services. Specifically, the 9700 and 9200 Series products comprise the end-to-end solution from customer premises to the metro core, implementing a smooth evolution to a cost-effective Ethernet-based network, while maintaining low CAPEX and OPEX.

Who are your customers?

ECI’s solutions provide the network foundation for five distinct markets:
® Incumbent and competitive telecom carriers
® Wireless/Cellular service providers
® Multiple Service Operators (MSOs) – or cable operators, who now offer a wide range of communication services
® Utilities/“Carriers of Carriers””– Companies with networks that serve as backbones for other carriers
® Government/Defence – Organizations that need a secure communication infrastructure for their large enterprise networks

Among its valued customers, ECI counts some of the leading service providers around the world, including Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Vodafone, Bezeq, Virgin Media (formerly NTL), KPN, UPC, Orange Broadband (formerly Wanadoo), Enertel, TeliaSonera, Svyaz Invest, VimpelCom, MGTS, Ukrtelecom, Kievstar, Tata, Bharti, China Telecom, Hutchison, SK Telecom, KT Corp. (formerly Korea Telecom), Chunghwa Telecom, Globe Telecom, Vtel, Intelsat, Telmex, ICE and many others.

What is the growth and turnover you are experiencing in India?
As a private company, we are not supplying revenue and growth guidance. Having said that, we have experienced a healthy growth in the Indian market, whose revenues represent about 20 per cent of ECI’s total worldwide revenues. We recognize the importance of the country, and will be expanding our R&D activities here in the later part of the year. We will also expand the service organization in the North-East region. We are continuously investing in the country in terms of R&D and technical manpower and look at the country as a major technical resource centre for the region.

What is your marketing and distribution structure?
Since most of our customers are Tier 1, we use our own resources for servicing them. We selectively use channels in the areas of PSU business. We will be working with selective channels on the PSU and Utelco markets.

What are the verticals you are targeting?
ECI is very active in the wireless backhaul segment as well as the Carrier business in India. In addition, we are also focussed on broadband segment with some of our innovative VDSL and G-PoN solutions. Moreover, we are looking at opportunities for turnkey deployments in the country. We intend to expand our strong positioning in optical products to new Telcos and expand our current relationships to Broadband products.

What is your service support strategy?
India is our service hub for Asia. We have aggressive plans to expand the service offering to our existing Indian customers as well as to the customers beyond. We have fully-equipped labs in Delhi and Mumbai to support our customers. We have 24X7 customer support centre in Mumbai and field teams spread across the country with 10 nodal offices.

How do you promote your brand?
  Our existing customers are our best brand ambassadors. Our continuous effort to exceed the service quality through customer satisfaction surveys and continuous feedback has put us in the “best-of-its-class” position in the country. This is reflected in one of the leading service providers conferring us an award for “best partner for 2007”.

What are the challenges you face in India?
Due to rapid network expansions in India, the main challenge we have faced relates to aggressive rollout schedules. So far, we have been able to satisfy our customers in this regard.

What is your USP?
Our continuous innovations on products and services provide a great value to the customers. Our products are designed to provide a long-lasting value, and are all future-proof to advanced services, such as triple play. What sets ECI apart from the rest of the market is ECI’s 1Net, a business framework focussed on optimising the way carriers transition their networks to Next-Generation Networks. Through ECI’s unique combination of innovative and multi-functional equipment, fully integrated solutions and agile approach to services, we provide customers the highest level of flexibility as they evolve their networks. ECI’s 1Net reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), creates new revenue opportunities and provides optimal network transition management for network operators.

What is your product or service strategy for feeding the growing market?
Our strategy is to provide investment protection to our customers. We offer technology- agnostic platforms, which can be migrated to the desired technologies at appropriate time to offer state-of-the-art services. We do not want our customers to invest preaturely in technologies of the future, but invest in the current products which will be migrated to future needs.

What are your other future plans? 
We will be expanding our R&D activities here in the later part of the year and also will expand the service organization in the North-East region. We are continuously investing in the country in terms of R&D and technical manpower and look at the country as a major technical resource centre for the region. We will be working with selective channels on the PSU and Utelco markets.