Vand D100 On The Fast Track
2013-01-28
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90 | VOICE&DATA | JULY 2012 | voicendata.com | A CyberMedia Publication
VSAT
satellite terminals where Hughes is the
secondary network bandwidth service
provider.
The mandate for Hughes across both
states is to expand the R-APDRP soluons
plaorm to urban as well as rural areas.
The Rajasthan and the Karnataka agree-
ments have been signed on for 3 years
and 5 years, respecvely.
Also, Hughes has received approxi-
mately 5,000 orders from January 2011
ll now for seng up VSAT terminals of
‘Brown Label’ ATMs’ service providers
across the country.
Second is Bhar airtel. Even though
the company witnessed at growth in
VSAT with `107 crore in FY12 as com-
pared to `95 crore in FY11, Bhar airtel
has deployed VSATs (13,000+) for Gu-
On the Fast Track
Highlights
Banking and Finance have been
the major growth drivers in FY12
Rural Penetration for CSCs
APDRPs is already gaining
grounds
Panchayat connectivity, RRBs,
ATM Digital Cinema and
Signage, shall drive the growth
for VSAT industry
On-the-move mobility
applications for voice and video
are growing
Enhanced VSAT CPEs for
security, routing and multi-
service integration, dual hubs
and adoption of Ka Band are
new key trends
Banking and finance rocked the VSAT industry in FY12 with
steadfast deployments
VSAT deployments in FY12
showed prominent growth
taking overall revenue for
this industry to `500 crore.
The industry registered close
to 6% growth while showing prominent
developments last year. These include,
first use of Ka-band spectrum (18-28
Ghz), on-the-move mobility applicaons
for voice and video, large scale adopon
for ATMs by white label and managed
service providers, enhanced VSAT CPEs
for security, roung, and mul-service
integraon business connuity through
dual Hubs.
Market Scan
First in the lead is Hughes Communica-
ons. The company registered a whop-
ping 18.4% growth with total revenue
clocking `167 crore for FY12. Hughes
bagged an order to provide network con-
necvity for police staons across 400
locaons in Jharkhand. It also provided
satellite based ‘receive only terminals’
(rots) network for Edusat project of the
Government of Punjab.
State Bank of India gave Hughes an
order for seng up 2,000 sites recently.
Hughes also bagged the contract for Jaipur
Vidyut Vitran Nigam (Jaipur Discom) in Ra-
jasthan under which Hughes will provide
broadband satellite services connecng
825 locaons.
The second contract was awarded
for the 5 ulity companies in Karnataka
(BESCOM, CESCOM, MESCOM, GESCOM,
and HESCOM) to deploy a network of 713
92 | VOICE&DATA | JULY 2012 | voicendata.com | A CyberMedia Publication
VSAT
jarat for its E-gram project. In addion
to large statewide deployments, it has
also installed services for large private
and public sector banks for their branch
connecvity and for carrying crical core
banking applicaons.
In FY12 airtel focused to further
build around available infrastructure
by deploying technologies like Gilat
Skyedge2.
Tatanet deployed 129 VSAT staons
as part of the optimum seismological
network for Indian Naonal Center for
Ocean Information Services (INCOIS).
Tatanet’s revenue clocked `84 crore
showing a growth of 9.1% in FY12. The
company has bagged an order for 3,000
VSATs from Wipro to be deployed as part
of the nancial inclusion project managed
by this nodal agency (NABARD).
Also, Tatanet installed connecvity for
close to 4,000 ATMs managed by serv-
ice providers like Prizm Payments, Tata
Communicaons Banking Infrastructure
(TCBIL), Euronet, FIS, and AGS.
Essel Shyam, even though with not
much addion to the VSAT deployments,
has bagged a few projects to its credit in
FY12. It deployed a VSAT network for
North Eastern Electric Power Corporaon
(NEEPCO) project and for deep water re-
sources (ONGC). The company showed a
degrowth of 20% last year.
Growth Drivers
Banking and finance have been the
major growth drivers with applica-
ons—ATM and core banking—driving
numbers. Key projects have been NAB-
ARD where system integrators namely,
Wipro, CÃ-Edge undertook to roll out
about 5,000 VSATs for rural branches
of cooperave banks.
Last year PSU banks went slow on
ATM deployment due to a decision of
MoF to consolidate the ATM procure-
ment across all PSU banks. These state-
specic tenders are expected to provide
a major llip to the VSAT industry, with
a significant portion of the 60,000+
numbers being deployed on VSAT in the
current year (FY13).
Beyond the above, multi cast has
been the major driver for VSAT sales.
Thus, projects leveraging on this one feed
beam to ‘unlimited’ locaons at a at
annualized cost has enabled applicaons
like digital cinema, distance learning to
leverage VSAT networks.
On the manufacturing and distribu-
on front, VSATs are increasingly being
used as back-up medium for business
connuity.
The oil & gas sector has been a major
driver of bandwidth sales for VSAT service
providers. Tatanet runs a Earth staon
based on i-Direct technology which is the
leading plaorm for this sector.
The VSAT connectivity space has
been dominated by instuonal nancial
inclusion projects. Reaching out to the
unserved and underserved at a reliable
but an economical cost, leads to VSAT as
the chosen mode of connecvity.
Deployments such as VPN & internet
services in dierent avors, varying from
pooled bandwidth to bandwidth-on-de-
mand, is gaining popularity. Availability
of VAI (value added internet) with ap-
plicaons like media, videoconferencing,
tele-education, medicine presents an
interesng proposion for VSAT industry
in the consumer/SOHO segments.
Accelerated VSAT as a product, which is
something new in the market, was built to
kill the slowness of applicaons on VSAT.
Going forward, bandwidth-on-de-
mand and value added services of airtel
will contribute and drive the demand for
VSAT. Also, with the increasing thrust
on internet penetration in India, we
can look forward to similar trends in
the future.
Innovation at its Peak
Many new innovaons in VSAT indus-
try were seen in the last year. These
included the use of smaller antenna foruse of smaller antenna for
easier VSAT terminal deployment, use
5.6%
Essel Shyam
4.2%
BSNL
3%
Others
21.4%
Bhar airtel
15.6%
HCL Comnet
16.8%
Tatanet
33.4%
Hughes
Communicaons
V&D Estimates
Market Share
Total Market Size: `500 crore
Top VSAT Players in Revenue Terms (FY 2011-12 in crore)
Players FY11-12 FY10-11 Change (%)
Hughes Communications 167 141 18.4
Bharti airtel 107 95 12.6
Tatanet 84 77 9.1
HCL Comnet 78 83 -6.0
Essel Shyam 28 35 -20.0
BSNL 21 20 5.0
Others 15 20 -25.0
Total 500 471 6.2
Others include: Infotel Satcom,GNFC
V&D Estimates
94 | VOICE&DATA | JULY 2012 | voicendata.com | A CyberMedia Publication
VSAT
of enhanced CPEs for beer security,
throughput and triple-play integraon,
use of latest coding for higher band-
width, mobile VSATs for use in strategic
areas like police, railways, defense, mul-
ple warehouses for faster deliveries, and
installaon tools integrated on mobile
phones and iPads.
Even though terrestrial links have
brought down the cost of bandwidth,
there are several areas where shared
bandwidth leads to lesser cost compared
to terrestrial bandwidth. These areas are
e-learning, rural communicaon market,
banking, oil & gas exploraon, e-govern-
ance, and healthcare.
The technical modicaons required
are those technologies which have a
very strong QOS capability and reduce
the idle bandwidth on the users’ CUG
bandwidth hired by the customer. At the
same me they should also take care that
innovave technology beer suitable for
a parcular kind of applicaon is used.
These technologies are slowly coming
into the market and being accepted by
the users.
Hiccups
Most of the issues being faced by the
industry are a result of government
processes or policies. These include
availability of spectrum from ISRO (Ku,
Ext-C band), severe crunch in getting
Akanksha Singh
akankshas@cybermedia.co.inV&D Estimates
2011-12 2010-11
5000
250
0
Market Size
(in `crore)
Revenue (FY 2011-12)
500
6.2%
471
transponders from ISRO to the industry,
latest Ka-band satellites not being avail-
able in the country, connuaon of the
obsolete ‘Closed User Group’ denion
for VSAT services, etc.
USO Fund is also not being given to
VSAT technology where natural use is
for rural services. Other issues include
perming ‘open skies’ for free access to
global satellite transponders, perming
smaller antenna size (0.74 m) for Ku-band
as per internaonal norm, and reducon
of revenue share/service taxes for services
in rural areas.
Key Trends
As mentioned earlier also, address-
ing various challenges with innovave
technologies in VSAT industry is bringing
down the cost of ownership and improved
bandwidth on the given spectrum. The
state of technologies which will enable
this are:
Ka Band: Ka band can be consid-
ered the future. It will have very
high bandwidth over VSATs, whose
drascally reduced prices will make
VSAT a compeon to the terrestrial
service providers
Carrier in Channel Mulple Access:
This is a bandwidth saving technology
which exploits the excess power avail-
able with the satellites and reuses the
bandwidth again, which eecvely is
twice the bandwidth that has been
leased
Improved Encoders for Broadcast and
DTH Markets: The latest encoders
have greatly reduced the bandwidth
required over the air. This eecvely
means beer quality of video trans-
mied with less bandwidth
SCPC Return with DVB-S2: This type
of combinaon is suitable for high
bandwidth requirement and also real-
me applicaons, and sll be able to
reduce the total cost of ownership.
Top VSAT Players in Number Terms (FY 2011-12)
Players FY11-12 FY10-11 Change (%)
Hughes Communications 55,803 44,500 25.4
Bharti airtel 46,895 43,912 6.8
HCL Comnet 23,922 25,427 -5.9
Tatanet 20,884 16,100 29.7
BSNL 9,269 8,200 13.0
Essel Shyam 2,743 2,728 0.5
Others 3,047 1,980 53.9
Total 162,563 140,867 15.4
Others include: Infotel Satcom, GNFC
V&D Estimates
Reaching out to
the unserved and
underserved at
a reliable but an
economical cost,
leads to VSAT as
the chosen mode of
connectivity
