Building democratized networks

The lockdown has led to a surge in data usage. Here is what TSPs can do to improve their legacy networks so that it can better cope up with the ever-increasing demand

- PRAVIN S BHANDARKAR

The networking industry is going through an evolution leading to desegregation—hardware can be bought from one location and software from another, much like the Android ecosystem where one can buy hardware and software separately.

So what have we done? We have developed a new way of building networks, using cloud and internet native principles in networking and focusing on access, the network piece that is used to connect from the internet to home and small office users.

In this digital era, we see a lot of traffic being generated by OTTs and the likes of AWS for business applications. The networks are engineered in a way that they can scale up horizontally as the content increases. On the other side, we have the service providers that are becoming big pipes. They don’t have their top-line growth, but then they have to invest in the customer experience and to grow their networks.

This growth is asymmetric as they use incumbent or integrated systems. Instead, they should build a small grid at every location. This is like taking cloud in infrastructure down to central offices, and one can build as many of such small grids as they want. One just needs to buy a rack unit and put our software on top of it. This helps because our price point presents a viable business option.