Ascend To Establish Thai Office To Target Access Market 07/02/98
Newsbytes, Thursday, July 02, 1998 at 14:56
BANGKOK, THAILAND, 1998 JUL 2 (NB) -- By Sasiwimon Boonruang, Bangkok
Post. To strengthen its market base in Thailand and the region, Ascend
Communications [NASDAQ:ASND] will set up an office here during the
third quarter this year, aiming to capture at least 70 percent of
the access market share.
According to Ascend Communications director, international marketing,
Jeff Gustafson, Ascend has been in Thailand for almost two years in
terms of products and technology. The establishment of the company
office here this year did not mean Ascend was late to the game, only
that now was the right time to set up an office.
Thailand had huge potential in the telecommunications networks even
though it was currently facing economic turmoil - which will only
be temporary, he said.
Ascend will work closely with telecommunications carriers and
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) helping them to design voice over
Internet protocol services (V-over-IP) and virtual private networks
(VPNs) which are a trend in data communications and
telecommunications convergence.
In line with its plan to set up an office here between July to September,
Gustafson noted that Ascend will recruit staff with marketing and
technical skills, and most will be system engineers who directly
support local customers.
Meanwhile, the company will create and strengthen systems integration
and reseller channels. Two primary resellers will be Datacraft and
World Information Technology (WIT). Ascend would like to find other
resellers who are Value Added Resellers (VARs) to focus on Wide Area
Networks (WAN) since this is a very big market.
The Thai office will be part of Ascend's strategy to support the
exploding Asean public data network development.
Illustrating the growth of data traffic, Gustafson said data traffic
will overtake voice traffic on the MCI network around the year 2000.
Ascend provides total solutions for telecom carriers including ATM,
frame relay, remote access and Internet access.
In the worldwide market, Ascend grew tremendously in 1997, according
to Gustafson, who said it was the number one provider of frame relay
and ATM equipment to service providers with 42 percent and 23 percent
market share respectively.
Ascend was also the number one provider of remote access and Internet
access dial ports with 62 percent market share in ISDN and over 50
percent in analog.
He said 80 percent of Ascend sales are to carriers and ISPs, its primary
markets.
In the Asian region, the three major markets of Ascend are telecom
carriers, ISPs and the enterprise space, he said, adding that Ascend
sales were 50 percent, 40 percent and 10 percent in these markets
respectively.
In Thailand, Thai Farmers Bank was one of its major customers
deploying Ascend frame relay connecting all the branches of the bank
throughout the country with its office headquarters. Other reference
sites for Ascend were the National Electronics and Computer Technology
Centre (Nectec), KSC Internet and Ucom. Being very active in Thailand,
Ascend had 70 percent in access market share here last year and it
hopes the market share this year will remain the same.
Gustafson added that the emerging market requirements are upgrading
phone systems to digital technology; high capacity voice service
availability such as T1, E1, R2, ISDN, PRI; Internet deployment;
infrastructure upgrades; and increasing PC sales.
Markets currently on the rise include Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore, and Thailand, while markets with the greatest potential
were Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Vietnam, he said.
|
