Telecom Lead India: Mavenir Systems, a provider of LTE 4G solutions, has recently set up its R&D center in Bangalore. It is the largest overseas set up with a significant investment to develop products and solutions for global markets. Anup Mahajan, senior director – R & D, Mavenir Systems, talks about the company’s India plan. Excerpts of an online interview:

What are your investment and manpower expansion plans in India?

The Bangalore location is Mavenir’s biggest development center. We plan to continue to invest in this location and plan to grow to 350 people by next fiscal year.

Mavenir R&D centre is focused on complete end-to-end delivery of innovative next generation IMS solutions – VoLTE, RCSe, BGCF, PRS, XDMS etc to global market place. We have experts based in Bangalore location that are engaged directly and work very closely with operators and customers around the world not only understanding their needs but also educating and explaining the operators how and what they should transform. This is very unique about Mavenir. Also, our development and validation team works with operations center, which is also based in Bangalore, to help with any production issues or deployment. This has helped development team to appreciate the operators/carries strict operational requirements and processes.

How the company is banking on the introduction of 4G LTE technology in India?

The introduction of 4G LTE will mean operators will transform their network core to deploy innovative applications and solutions. Mavenir is strategically positioned with our IMS product portfolio that can help them grow their revenue base with introduction of multi-media (voice and video) and next generation messaging applications.

We are seeing lot of LTE momentum in emerging markets, especially in India. With LTE network in place, operators are looking for innovative and next generation solutions to deliver – voice, video (VoLTE) and messaging (RCSe, MCS) – applications. We already see companies actively engaged with us on various trials and aggressively moving towards limited deployment of such applications.

What are your main engagements with telecom operators in the Global 4G LTE arena?

4G LTE is being deployed in most developed markets. Mavenir is very actively engaged with tier-1 and tier-2 operators around the world to understand their needs and help transform their networks to allow them to deploy new, innovative next generation services quickly.

 What are the new offerings/solutions in pipeline for 4G LTE market in India?

Voice over fixed board based (VoWiFi), Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB) are new solutions being targeted in India market.

We have been engaged with tier-1 operators in developed markets over past 4-5 yrs over IMS and VoLTE, RCSe solutions. Based on our working relationship with them, we have gained significant experience and understanding of the challenges operators typically encounters moving toward 4G technologies. We have been critical partners and enablers for operators to help transform their networks. Operators in Indian market our global market place experience and looking forward for our expertise to help educate and transform their networks.

What are the emerging challenges in the Indian market?

The Indian market is very dynamic. Operators are still trying to strategize their 4G plans. This requires very agile and dynamic development model. Although challenging, Mavenir is uniquely positioned with our experience in the rest of the world, to assist with these requirements.

There is huge potential. Adoption of smart phone is underway. With adoption of newer mobile devices, consumer is going to demand for more value added features and applications.  This has direct impact and demand on the network infrastructure/components required for delivery of such solutions/applications. We are uniquely positioned both in terms of experience and product portfolio to help meet that potential.

Mavenir Systems long-term commitment to India is shown through its 100 percent R&D setup creating tremendous opportunities for the superior local talent, offering them opportunity to work on cutting edge technology that is set to change the wireless communication scenario.

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