| |June 20218By Shiv Kumar Singh, Senior Vice President - Head of Technology, Products, Solutions & ServicesC ertainly, the pandemic is unprecedented and has brought in a new normal. The new normal is all about changed life style, which has also changed the ways of conducting business. Work from home for employees is a major factor for most industries and this has pushed the need for connectivity even higher and is exerting pressure on performance loads for the telecom infrastructure. Need for collaboration tools to function effectively is in turn pushing the higher bandwidth needs and higher concurrent user uptimes for the routing and switching infrastructure of the networks. Telecom and networking solutions are witnessing both sides of the coin here in terms of the current situation being an opportunity as well as a challenge. Opportunity by way of higher demand for connectivity and increased user base leading to higher ARPU. Challenge by way of aggressive time frames for ramping up infrastructure for increasing access network coverage, scale up of compute and processing infrastructure and higher load on call and contact centers for helpdesk and escalation functions.NewEquations In Network Solutions Market - New Trends Of Innovation And InventionWork from home has pushed the demand for online collaboration tools and the demand for offsite work enablement has gone up. Online workspaces are being adopted for day to day operations by majority of the firms. OTT applications have also become widely accepted and are pushing innovative offerings in entertainment, advertising, marketing, telemedicine, tele-shopping, service aggregation and various other business activities. This trend has also pushed up the need for last mile connectivity solutions like FTTH, Home WIFI and Cellular data connectivity. Increase in last mile connectivity requirements has directly hiked the need for access network end point products like WIFI routers, Switches, ONU/ONT's and accessories like UTP cables, Optical Fiber cables etc. have also gone up. Innovative use of wired and wireless products for providing end point connectivity are being introduced e.g. home WIFI MESH, WIFI enabled ONU's, Outdoor WIFI coverage and fiber based connectivity solutions with guaranteed SLA's for connectivity metrics. These developments have already started to show their effect in the way the industry is adopting newer ways to automate processes, remote operations, introduction of newer products to improve on line collaboration and drawing up plans for network expansion to cater to the last mile. Tremendous focus on high bandwidth supporting products for the last mile is being accorded and silicon companies are dishing out high capacity and better feature equipped chipsets for adoption by the product development companies. HFCL has been a pioneer in introducing latest Telecom product technology in its home grown products within the country. HFCL has been a significant contributor to "Make in India" efforts and has setup manufacturing plants for Telecom products at multiple locations within the country. We have introduced a host of new products in the Optical Fiber cable range, Optical fiber accessories, networking expert opinionPOST COVID-19 ERA FOR THE TELECOM & NETWORKING SOLUTIONS INDUSTRY - CHALLENGES THAT ORGANIZATIONS ARE FACINGFor 26+ years in technology, product development, operations, business development, cross functional management and delivery, he is an outstanding contributor.
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