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© ComNews
21.05.2007
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| Igor Khulak, Head of the Business Development Department at Sitronics Telecom Solutions, spoke to “Standard” magazine about his company’s activities on Pakistan’s market and other Southern and South East Asian markets. |
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Pakistan is an ideal market for Russian vendors of telecom equipment, billing and other software solutions. The reason is quite simple: this country is at odds with both India and Israel, where many large global vendors are located. This partially explains the presence of the St. Petersburg company, Scientific and Technology Center "Protei," in Pakistan. As a matter of fact, "Protei's" products such as IVR systems, Voice Mail and PRBT are used by DIALLOG, a CDMA operator. However, the position of Sitronics Telecom Solutions is especially solid on the local market. This company has united Czech firm Strom Telecom (renamed Sitronics Telecom Solutions), Greek Intracom, and Russian "East Wind" and "Sitronics Telecom Solutions".
Among "Sitronics Telecom Solutions" in Pakistan are Wateen Telecom (the operator of the world's largest mobile WiMAX network); Warid Telecom, a GSM operator (which is also planning to implement Sitronics' solutions in Bangladesh, Congo and Uganda); and finally, Mobilink, the largest GSM operator in Pakistan (where the Russian vendor implements its ERP solution). It is very likely that soon two other large telecom accounts, PTCL, the largest telecom monopoly and DIALLOG will become Sitronics's partners.
- Igor, how does Sitronics Telecom Solutions evaluate the prospects of the Southern and South East Asian countries for your company's operations?
- The Asian Pacific telecom market is actually divided in two groups: mature telecom operators with extensive work experience on Pakistan's market, and new 3G, alternative and WiMAX-operators. "Sitronics Telecom Solutions" is ready to offer very interesting solutions to both groups: convergent billing for mature operators, who have outgrown their existing pre-paid billing platforms. And we have tested solutions in the sphere of retranslation and OSS/BSS for the operators who recently obtained licenses for providing 3G and WiMAX services, and whose highest business priority is profitability and rapid network deployment.
- Currently your activities in the Pakistan market and other regional countries are done from your Dubai office. Do you have plans to open an office in one of our the South East Asian countries?
- "Sitronics" has announced many times that the key markets for the company are Russia, CIS countries and Eastern Europe, and Middle East and Africa (EEMEA) region. However, we believe that South East Asia is also a very attractive market for our business. Currently, we are slowly expanding our presence in these markets, in particular, in November 2006 we opened our office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As far as organization is concerned - our EEMEA department, with a head office in Athens, is in charge of business development in that region.
- Who do you think are your main competitors in Southern and South East Asian countries? In other markets?
- In the field of BSS-systems our main competitors are mainly Comverse and new alternative vendors in Israel and India. In the Asia Pacific region we already see some fundamental changes: traditional billing vendors slowly are giving up their positions because of high costs of solutions and significant lack of opportunities and services.
In terms of solutions for basic and broadband networks we are competing with two groups of vendors: traditional networking equipment vendors (Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, etc.) and smaller suppliers of specialized equipment, like Cambridge and Alvarion.
I am sure that Sitronics Telecom Solutions will maintain a strong position between these two groups, offering prospective soultions, local support and financing opportunities that are usually offered by large vendors, as well as individual services and commercial flexibility that is traditionally offered by smaller companies.
- What are some key differences of working on Asian Pacific and European markets?
- I believe that the Asian Pacific region is the region with a very dynamic market and high population growth. For us, AP is a prospect market. It's in geographical proximity with our key markets. The main difference between working in EEMEA region and CIS countries is in business culture. The clients in AP region are less conservative and faster adopters to new technologies. In addition, our Chinese competitors are very active in this region (and these include primarily Huawei and ZTE). Therefore, we consider AP a perfect field where we can quickly evaluate our products and prospective.
Standard
back to Pakistan
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