Transcript: Sujai Karampuri of Sloka Telecom on WiMax Scene in India

This transcript is from a PodTech.net podcast at:
http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1616/sujai-karampuri-of-sloka-telecom-on-wimax-scene-in-india

Guest: Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Host: Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Hello and welcome. You're listening to the Kiruba show at PodTech India. This is a show where we get to speak with the leading newsmakers from the Indian IT industry. WiMax, sounds familiar, uh? Why not, we've been hearing about it for the last so many years, but ever got to use it? I bet not. WiMax has a lot of hype, says Sujai Karampuri, the Founding CEO of Sloka Telecom, a WiMax solution provider. In this interview, he gives a realistic picture about WiMax emergence, and talks about how was two year old startup aims to be a significant player in the wireless domain. Let's listen in.

Sujai, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time out.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Thank you Kiruba, thanks a lot.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Your company Sloka Telecom, tell us more about it and when you did you found it, what is the reason behind founding this?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Sloka Telecom is a two year old company. We are based at Bangalore, India. We would like to see it as an Indian company which -- the reason why we came about is because we believe that Indian market and some of the emerging markets in the world, required a telecommunication company, which caters to those markets and we wanted to position ourselves as one of those companies.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Okay. And you founded this two years back and what were you doing before that, just give us a little history about it.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
So, my experience has been mostly in the telecommunications, or I would say primarily, wireless. I was in US for about nine years and I was mostly with Alcatel, working in US and Europe, where I was system designing and architecting some of the products, and then, for a year, I was in India with Sasken and that's when most of the thoughts came about and then we started this about two years ago.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Okay. You founded this of your own money?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes, I would say that it has come from two founders, and I would call myself a lead founder and there is another founder. So, two of us who had started this with our own money, and friends and families and it has been like this so far with some angels coming from US.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
I see. WiMax, not too many companies in this area, is that why you chose this area (a) because you are already deep into this, that's a good reason, but not too many companies around, why is that?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
So, actually we didn't choose WiMax as a conscious choice, I would say. So, the way we look at ourself is, we don't want to be technology dependent, we want to see what we can do to make a solution for certain requirements. So, WiMax came as at right solution and we thought that it was a good technology that we should embrace cater to certain markets and certain products. So, that's how it came about. So, we believe that WiMax has its own room and space, and it can have its own reason, why it should stay and I think we are going to cater to that particular market.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
I've been hearing about WiMax for the last three years and I'm waiting, waiting and I'm still waiting, when will this see the light of the day?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
See, actually what happens is many times we tend to overhype, suddenly new technologies and we go about telling everybody that it's coming, but most of the time when we say that, it's not going to come just right away, there are so many things that have to happen, the economics, the regulations and sometimes even the market requirements, there should be enough market that you see to actually roll it out. So, all these things have to play together, standardization itself has to play together and then there has to be ecosystem. If not many people or not many companies are working on it, you don't get the right product at the right price.

So, these things take time, most of the time. So, but having said that, yeah we tend to kind of overhype and kind of give deadlines and milestones, which are little too early, because too optimistic, but then the realism sets in and then you start to see that. So, I would say that WiMax is happening but it's happening on a very small scale right now. There're deployments happening and according to the last count, there're about 200 networks that are -- have catered or budgeted money for WiMax in the world.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
But they are not yet implemented.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
No, not all of them have implemented but many have implemented. Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
In India?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes, we have an implementation in India and there the licenses have been taken up by six or seven operators in India and some of them have started to roll out. Actually just few days ago one of the operators was at our office, ready to give us WiMax service in Bangalore. So, they have few cell sites in Bangalore that is rolling out WiMax.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Did you try them out?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
No, we did not try them out, but we wanted to know what they were offering and things like that. So, we did not try them out as yet, because it turned out to be a little expensive, right now. We believe that it will be expensive for at least another year, where it will be taken up only by corporates and enterprises, and then, by then, the low cost units would start to come into the market, and then, I think, we would start seeing it in residential and small office, home office. So, I would give it a 2008-mid, to be a full-scale good WiMax rolling out in India. But, by end of 2007, we should see some good deployments even for a small office residential.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
I think that's a realistic deadline out there, yeah.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
I hope it is, unless few things happen differently. But, yeah.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
What is the kind of speeds that we can expect out of WiMax?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
See, in WiMax -- there are two good things, it's a dedicated thing.- If you want dedicated, you get dedicated service. So, that means you can actually configure it, you pay more - you get more. So, you can go anywhere between 128 KB/sec or even lower, actually to 2 MB, 4 MB, and there could be a big nice subscriber or who's an enterprise, who wants 10 MB/sec, you can give up to 10 MB/sec to a subscriber.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
What do you think would be the mass level? For example, right now in broadband, it's 256 kbps.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes, I think it would be 256, best effort. We call it as a 'best effort' that means we don't guarantee it. We try our best to give you that. That's what is a DSL, right now.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
That's DSL, but what about WiMax?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Even WiMax comes with all those varieties. It gives you best effort, that means you can go up to 256, but may not. But then also they give you lease line, that means, I give you 256, I guarantee 99.99% of the time that you will get 256 KB/sec but then you pay more. So, but those are all possible within WiMax, yes.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Okay. There was a good point that I remembered during earlier discussion you said that, "multiple users need not cut down on the bandwidth." For example, ten people using or hundred people using, the bandwidth does not get shared in WiMax.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
No, if I said that, I'm wrong. It does get, the frequency is limited and the minute you give certain frequency to one person then it gets out of the pool. So, you can look at it as a highway, which is available. The minute the few lanes are taken up, only certain lanes are available. So, you need to play with it. But, at the same time, what it means is, you get -- it's not like Wi-Fi where you get shared. Yes, that's what I was trying to come at. So, Wi-Fi gets shared. WiMax, you can ask what you want and you'll get that, that's a difference.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Okay. It's little confusing right now. So, you have --- let's take an office, an example of an office. There are ten people using Wi-Fi, right. If another twenty people come in, then the per person usage comes down, right because twenty extra people coming in. But you're saying, that won't be a problem in WiMax.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
If they are WiMaxAX subscribers directly getting the service from the operator, yes. But, that is very tough to come in the next one-and-a-half year, it will, over a period of time, when you are directly a WiMax Subscriber in your laptop -- where you have a WiMax card in your laptop, I think then you are talking directly to the cell operator, then yes, you are not shared. But, yeah, it will take some time.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Wi-Fi has a 100-meter limit.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes. Approximately, yes.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Approximately. What about WiMax?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
WiMax is I would say about 5 kms at the best. I would say, there are certain special conditions even for that you have to be in the line-of-sight range, but I will...

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
That's the same problem as Wi-Fi then.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
No, but it would at least come to 2 kms cell-radius, which is still a good coverage compared to what Wi-Fi can do, yes.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
What is the difference between Fixed WiMax and Mobile WiMax?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
They are completely two different variants of WiMax, and I would say that they are completely incompatible. There are certain things that you can re-use, but as a network deployer, I don't think you should see them as together. So, they are two different ones and Fixed would come as a replacement to your DSL, and it would give service to fixed subscribers in nomadic. When I say, 'nomadic,' you work -- go home, work, come to office, work, but you are not Mobile. But Mobile WiMax is a completely different ball game, it's like more like 3G coverage kind of a thing, or 2G, GSM kind of a thing. So, they're two different things.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Okay. Talking of 3G, you had this statement that said, 'WiMax and 3G' and it's not necessarily WiMax versus 3G, can you explain that?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes. So, what I meant by that is people try to say that it's 3G versus WiMax, and they try to see if which one is better and which would have a higher market share. I believe that's not going to be the case. I think there is a reason why 3G will exist and it will continue to exist and continue to grow, and WiMax will also have -- will find its own place. I can think of a scenario wherein an operator would operate 3G and WiMax and he would offload lot of traffic onto the WiMax, because maybe it is turning out to be cheaper for him, maybe there is more spectrum and there is a good coverage for WiMax in that area, and so on.

So, I think I would also see more units coming with a 3G and WiMax in the hand-held devices making the best of both worlds, and they are even combining Wi-Fi into it. So, you are inside the room, maybe you are using Wi-Fi. So, multiple technology handsets is what it's going to be and...

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
With the coming in of 3G and WiMax, it's going to dramatically change the scenario of the Internet, right. Suddenly multimedia is a great possibility.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Absolutely.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Multiplayer gaming is a great possibility, right.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
It's going to completely change the thing. Do you foresee that?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes, absolutely. That is the reason, why it has to come. We are already thinking of how we make the user not select a technology or something but, what he wants, he should get irrespective of the technology. That's where we should create the units, handhelds and at the same time, the network should be ready for that. I think- we are all working towards that in our own way.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Okay. Let's come back to Sloka Telecom. Tell us how big is your company and -- let's talk how big is your company?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes, so we are right now, currently about 15 people and we would soon be about, I would say, 25-30 people in a month or so. So, we are -- -I'd say just expanding. So, we've been working like this for almost two years now.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Are you looking out for investments at this stage?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes, absolutely. We've been on Angel Investment so far, and we would like to go for a Series A Financing. I would say, we would start scouting around January timeframe and we would like to see if we can close it by July 2007. That's our aim, right now.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
You obviously don't -- will not give the service directly to the customer?
Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Absolutely.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
You will have to go through the service providers like the Telecom Service Providers or the ISPs.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Yes, Wireless ISPs. We sell to Wireless ISPs, we have to sell to the service providers, to the network operators. Then we also go into an OEM agreement, that means, if there is a big company who wants Bay Stations and the CPs from somebody, we could be the guys. So, that's how we model ourselves.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Have you already started commercial activity?

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
No, not yet. We plan to do it sometime in January. So, I would say that we want to go when we are ready.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
Okay. Excellent, Sujai. Thank you so much for the time. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Sujai Karampuri - Sloka Telecom
Thanks a lot Kiruba for taking time. Thank you so much.

Kiruba Shankar - IndiaTech
You were listening to Sujai Karampuri, the Founder CEO of Sloka Telecom on 'WiMax in India,' thanks for listening. Bye-bye.