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Interview With R&M's Jean Pierre Labry and Martin Kellenberger
Published Jan 5, 2012
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Q. How is R&M helping businesses in different sectors benefit from the latest advances in network cabling?
R&M has two strong legs, which are our copper and fiber solutions, offering an extensive range of over 5,500 copper (both shielded and unshielded) and fiber products. We focus on quality, modularity, and flexibility as we’re not just selling a box but a SOLUTION. We aim for customization for any sector, which is a unique approach in the market, as well as innovation, investing 10% of annual sales back into research and development.
Q. Any relevant landmark achievements regionally?
R&M’s achievements in the region are marked by several successes in the supply of copper and fiber solutions to many of the largest compounds, residential and business buildings in the Middle East and Africa.
We also have extensive domain experience across several industry verticals including petrochemical, public networks (telecom carriers), industrial, hospitality, city development, transportation, finance, sports (stadiums), defense, and healthcare.
Q. What are R&M’s solutions for FTTH networks?
R&M provides a complete range of Swiss quality fiber solutions customized per the need of our end users. R&M solutions are already deployed and we’ve proven to be one of the best partners in the region and are considered the region’s top expert in Fiber to the Home (FTTH) solutions.
And thanks to the significant investment in our new supply chain HUB in the Dubai Airport Free Zone, the second one in the world launched after Singapore, customers can have faster product delivery to the region as well as project engineering support by bringing Swiss expertise closer to customers. This allows for SPEED AND FLEXIBILITY to our solution.
Q. How significant a step forward is triple play for the Middle East?
Video communication is playing a vital role in this digital era of social networking and e-services (e-health, e-learning, e-entertainment and e-governance). Globally, content providers are offering numerous products like HDTV, 3DTV, Video on Demand (VOD), etc. Bandwidth requirements are growing exponentially to meet this demand.
As a result, service providers and incumbents foresee the provision of a fiber solution to meet these high bandwidth requirements. This is forcing infrastructure providers to invest more and more in FTTH deployment to cover applications such as browsing, interactive video and voice over IP being offered through triple play.
Q. How much will the application of triple play affect the region’s bandwidth/data requirements?
We are already seeing the growing need for increased bandwidth speeds. But very soon ultra high speed Internet will be ubiquitous in many parts of the region.
Q. Are networks in the region prepared for triple play?
To date, the Middle East is home to a significant number of FTTH/B subscribers. Out of a million homes, we have seen a 60% increase in the number of FTTH subscribers in the last year.
Yet, most of the optical fiber rollouts are still in the planning stage, with the exception of operators like Etisalat and du, which accounted for 96% of the subscribers in the Middle East. Hence all households in the UAE now have access to ultra-fast broadband today. Other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman have also already recognized the importance of FTTH investment in terms of socio-economic development and are beginning to deploy fiber networks.
R&M is playing a vital role in providing FTTH infrastructure requirement in terms of consultancy, reliability, high quality products and solutions tailored to the needs of various deployment models; participating in this objective together with telecom operators in the region.
Q. What are your expansion plans in the region this year?
Despite the Arab spring which took place in the region earlier this year, R&M has continued to show an aggressive presence in the market, focusing on countries with significant infrastructure projects. Our overall strategy is to invest in the region for the region as well as continue to launch our innovative new products across the Middle East and Africa.
To strengthen our position, we opened our own new supply chain HUB in the Dubai Airport Free Zone. This gives R&M the advantage of delivering products quickly and more efficiently to customers.
R&M also emphasizes education. We recently launched a new IT training academy in Dubai for our customers and partners to improve technical expertise in the market when it comes to FTTx/Data entry.
Posted by VMD - [Virtual Marketing Department]
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