Asia Pacific carriers still “in the money” but danger lurks ahead

Stephen Withers
Saturday, 31 May 2008 08:41

IT Industry - Strategy

In the quest for keeping costs down and profits up, Sharat Sinha, director of operations for Cisco Asia Pacific, observed that one example is the way carriers are prepared to share base station towers to help keep their costs down.

Sinha also suggested that one reason for Asia Pacific carriers' greater profitability is that they have picked the right technologies for the right market segments.

For example, as people are increasingly interested in uploading video content rather than merely downloading it, metro Ethernet has become more relevant to the consumer market than asymmetric technologies.

Brad Booth, board chairman of the Ethernet Alliance went even further.

Asia Pacific carriers are "backing the right horse" because Ethernet technologies are already moving towards speeds of 10Gbps and even 100Gbps, and this is especially important if people are going to work from home.

With fuel prices rising the way they have been, "I'm better off staying at home [to work]," he said. "We [the US] have got to catch up" with Korea and other Asian nations in this respect, he suggested.

Wired technologies are also still light years faster than wireless technologies, although as 3.5G, WiMAX and LTE technologies continue evolving and coming to market, that particular gap is slowly shrinking.