asiaflux.com Blog

I just spent 4 whole days at the show and I must say that things certainly seem to be looking up for the Communications industry of Asia. The whole event was flooded with Indians, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Indonesians and every Asian nationality you could think of (one conspicuous absence were the Thais, I hardly saw any). I have been attending and exhibiting at CommunicAsia for the past 12 years and I must say that this year’s event must rate as one of the most lively in terms of deals and potential deals being discussed.

The hot sector was networking and you could find scores of mobile wireless, Wimax, Wifi and Optical vendors spread amongst the halls. And they were filled with visitors too, busily enquiring and taking stock of the newest innovations on offer.

Motorola, Cisco and Juniper were strangely absent. And LG took the opportunity to hog the limelight with Korean hip-hop dancers (those guys were pretty amazing with their dancing) and stunning women to launch their LG Shine Mobile phone range. Their stand was HOT with 4 LG Shine phones given away daily in lucky draws. I saw some very executive types furiously scribbling away their details on reams of lucky draw coupons that they somehow managed to get hold of. Basically when the show was on every 2 hours or so, the entire area came to a standstill and became a concert hall.

The Singapore pavilion was out in force this year with more exhibitors than I have ever seen in years. They had everything from wireless control solutions to Callback mobile phones to huge LCD screens (86″ I think) to IP video surveillance etc.

On the first day, there was a long queue just to get the Visitor passes even for pre-registered visitors. Some attendees were complaining that they had to queue for more than half an hour just to get in.

As you can imagine, lunch time was a wait and wait affair; wait to get food, wait for an available table, wait for service. The smart ones either had their lunch before 11.30 or waited till after 3.00.

If this is a sign of the resurgence of the communications industry in Singapore, you better make plans for CommunicAsia 2008. You wouldn’t want to miss it!

IPv6 Forum is a non-profit organisation comprising internet vendors, subject matter experts, research and education networks, with the mission of advocating IPv6 by improving technology, market, and industry awareness of IPv6. I have news that the IPv6 Forum – Singapore Chapter is in the works of being setup.

Details like website, membership, mission and possibly IPv6 Certification are being worked out.

In fact, anyone interested in either knowing more or joining as a member can leave either their contact details with me or go to the Go6.Net booth 6B4-09 at CommunicAsia 2007 to find out more.

San Jose, CA – Lok Technology announced today that QMax Communications Pte Ltd is deploying its wireless fidelity (WiFi) network management and control appliances to service the west sector of Singapore as part of the government sponsored Wireless@SG initiative.

Wireless@SG is part of the Infocomm Development Authority’s (IDA) masterplan, Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) that will transform the country into an “intelligent nation” and connect businesses, households, government, and roaming users by providing broadband Internet access across the island. For the first three years QMax provides “basic” free Internet access with a minimum of 512 Kbps bandwidth available for users accessing the internet from one of the over 2000 hotspots being deployed in their “West Sector”. QMax subscribers requiring bandwidth above 512 Kbps or other premium access services will be able to sign up for a variety of fee based plans in the QMax coverage area. Once connected, users are able to access all normal Internet-based services (e.g. online gaming, web surfing, instant messaging, VoIP and email).

Providing wireless Internet access requires WiFi radios that deliver to and receive signals from laptops and other IP enabled devices like computers, PDAs, and WiFi phones, be installed in each hotspot or hotzone. Once connected data is passed between the radios and the Internet through LokBox appliances that authenticate subscribers and delivers the right amount of bandwidth to each user depending on their access plan (premium or free). The LokBox also enables location-based advertising to be delivered to subscribers by businesses in or close to the hotspot, or subject sensitive advertising based on user search criteria. Finally the LokBox aggregates bandwidth and creates a load balanced, highly available connection from the QMax Data Centre to the Internet

“The QMax / Lok Technology collaboration is a natural fit. QMax’s business experience, knowledge of Internet service delivery, and commitment to excellence united with Lok’s expertise in management and control of revenue generating networking (RGN) is a powerful combination enabling high-quality Wi-Fi services for our customers,” said Alex Tan, QMax Director. “We selected the LokBox appliances to manage the network because of the highly integrated nature of their appliance, incredible breadth of applications and their reputation for delivering high-speed, high quality products to our specific industry.

Traditionally hotspot service providers and ISP’s build extensive computing, networking and storage infrastructures to deliver Internet services. This requires large capital expenditures, expensive and time consuming integration and legions of technical support personnel to install and support this data center equipment. This drives up the cost of service delivery and makes providing quality service extremely expensive. With the LokBox this mass of disparate equipment is reduced to one appliance to purchase, install, integrate, operate and support.

With LokBox appliances performing such a critical function QMax is able to increase network performance and reduce costs and complexities, improving both the customer experience and the QMax bottom line. Utilizing LokBox technology QMax can centrally manage and both its indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots and hotzones ensuring a high speed and highly available user experience.

“We are absolutely delighted to be part of the Wireless@SG initiative and are especially proud of our relationship with QMax. Their knowledge of the ISP market and their existing service capability made our job easy “, said Keenan Klinger, President of Lok Technology. QMax is a very demanding partner and one that values their customers above all else. This project is very exciting, and we are very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the iN2015 masterplan.

The LokBox shared memory architecture and out-of-order packet-processing technology are unique in the industry and are essential to effectively running RGNs. Just as disparate routers, firewalls, intrusion protection systems, authentication servers, web cache devices, link bonding switches and bandwidth priority and allocation systems serve as traffic-management systems for wired networks, the LokBox appliances use sophisticated mathematical algorithms and integration techniques to combine these functions into a single appliance for wireless networks. The quality of a Wi-Fi network depends on to the ability of the equipment to aggregate, route and validated traffic intelligently, efficiently and dependably – with as few moving parts as possible.

About Lok Technology, Inc.

Lok Technology is a leading provider of gateways and centralized-authentication appliances designed to manage, provision, and protect revenue-generating networks. LokBox appliances offer customer networks of all sizes a single integrated network-provisioning appliance for cost-effective and scalable network deployments. Lok’s patent-pending shared-memory and out-of-order packet-processing technology are unique in the industry, allowing an unprecedented number of concurrent users to be categorized based upon policy and role-authentication. All of the functions and features required in today’s revenue-generating policy-enforcement networks are bundled in one LokBox appliance. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Lok Technology has a worldwide sales and technical support organization, along with a global network of resellers and integrators. AsiaFlux Networks is a major reseller of Lok Technology products in Asia. Learn more at www.asiaflux.com

About QMax Communications Pte Ltd

QMax is a broadband infrastructure and technology company offering “Anytime, Anywhere” high speed wireless broadband connectivity. In March 2006, it became the first service provider in Singapore to successfully deploy and commercialize a wireless broadband service using the WBA spectrum (or commonly known as WIMAX). With strong support from its major shareholder, Creative Technology Ltd, a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products and portable media players, QMax is poised to be one of a new breed of broadband infrastructure and technology companies offering consumers a chance to wirelessly access digital media for communication, entertainment and learning at high speed.