Localization, Logistics are also Key to Succeed in the Asia-Pacific Market

(Top News, 8 Aug 2008)

By Stephen Las Marias, Editor


Ben Cardwell, Vice President, Andrew Wireless Solutions, a CommScope Inc. division, gives an update on the latest trends and opportunities in the wireless communications industry, as well as some of the changes and challenges that the company is seeing this year. He also shares some of the developments in Andrew after its acquisition by CommScope late last year. Excerpts:

What can you say are the major changes that have occurred after CommScope acquired Andrew, and what do you think are the major benefits of the acquisition to Andrew's business plans?
We haven't had significant change actually. Andrew and CommScope came together because of what they can add to each other—basically CommScope having the broadband and the enterprise space, and Andrew having the wireless space that they didn't have. So together we make a global leader in the last mile access communications infrastructure. No matter where or how the user wants to access the network, whether it's in the office, at home, or when he's mobile, it's the CommScope network that he's accessing.

There are also not that much product rationalizations to be done during the acquisition. It's pretty much business as usual. What we are doing is paying a lot of attention to our customers and looking for opportunities now to make the most out of being one company.

So now, we are actually looking for growth opportunities. We are taking out an existing Andrew base, and we are starting to look for opportunity in the legacy CommScope gear that we didn't have, like cabinet solutions. And the enterprise sales force, how we can leverage that; how to offer in-building solutions to that channel, now that we got access to the sales force. It's really about growth, not consolidation.

What are the challenges and opportunities for both companies to work together as one, and what can customers look forward to?
The feedbacks that we get from our customers are very positive, as both companies have marquee brands in the spaces that we play in. Also, most of our operator customers are now trying to offer a common set of services over multiple access—over wireless, over broadband, over the enterprise connections; so the benefit of this is, as one company, being able to bring more solutions.

Early this year, we talked about the trends and opportunities as regards the wireless industry for Andrew. How do you see these developing as we enter the second half of the year?
We see growth in the Asia Pacific. The communications industry in Asia is at a very exciting time right now. Countries like India China, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc.; they are fueling the subscriber growth. For instance, is said to be adding 10 million subscribers a month. With that, we expect an excess of 100,000 new cell sites to be planted in India. That's really driving a lot of investments. And those cell sites are in the rural areas, small villages and towns, across India and Vietnam, etc., where a lot of providers are bringing in basic communications services to people for the very first time—people who never had any kind of communications services before. That's a good thing.

In other parts of Asia, in particular developed markets like Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, where 3G services were deployed in the past 2 years, we are now seeing those operators upgrade to 3.5G services—HSDPA and HSUPA. And then some of the newer operators are investing in WiMAX, while others are talking about LTE in the next couple of years.

So this is a very exciting time, and it is a fantastic environment to be in right now.

What do you think will continue to be the biggest challenges that the company will face in this region?
Our challenge and focus are always on localization. Asia-Pacific is not one market as some would say. It is composed of different countries and markets, and certainly different operators in those markets. The challenge is we have to understand each market carefully. I think that is part of the value that we bring as Andrew over our competitors; we put the people in the ground, we hire local people that understand the market, we put distribution and logistic centers in those markets, and if it makes sense, we put factories in the markets, in the regions that we serve. We have to know those operators intimately, and how they want to do business.

And right now, there are so many infrastructures going on that the product and technology are extremely important. That's a given, that's a must have. You got to have it and you got to be the best. But the logistics and local presence are as important as anything.

In terms of the operators, what do you think should they look out for to succeed in this market?
Fundamental to any operator is to be able to have a good quality network. And because of so much competition in this market—for example there are three, four, five or six choices in the marketplace—the challenge for the operators is be able to differentiate themselves somehow.

Andrew has invested heavily in India and China in the past year. What plans does Andrew have to invest further in the region this year and in the near future?
Yes, we did invest heavily in both of those markets, and we did that not only to serve India and China, but also to serve this region. And we will continue to invest in those markets, as well as continue to expand our capacity and production capability. At the end of last year, we opened our R&D facility in our China plant; and in India, we celebrated our 10th year of manufacturing by opening another facility.

Where do you think industry is headed and how is Andrew positioned to address these opportunities?
The market is headed toward the next billion subscribers in the Asia Pacific. Also, it is driving toward these new technologies. We got everything here in the Asia-Pacific; it is a technology melting pot—2G, 2.5G, 3G, 3.5G, 4G, WiMAX, LTE—and really convergence is a big thing here.

A big piece of our value is that we support those different frequency bands and technologies; we are agnostic to technology and the band being used in different countries. And the value that we're bringing is being able to consolidate multiple bands over a common infrastructure.

Being part of CommScope, our position is even better. Just an example, we are seeing a lot of changes in the way base stations are built. Now some of the parts of the base station can be fed with fiber optics. In the past, we've been buying fiber from another vendor. But now, we make the fiber.

So overall, we are very well positioned to add more value to our customers, not only from our aggressive R&D investment on all those different technologies we've talked about, but also on a broadband perspective.


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