John Henry COMMUNICA Issue Three | Page 42

COMMUNICA | No.3 COMMUNICA FINAL THOUGHT COMMUNICA Magazine discusses the growth and the challenges of tailoring products to an evolving, fibre hungry marketplace with Mads A. Høgfeldt, CEO of global telecoms product leader Emtelle. COMMUNICA Magazine (CM): How has Emtelle grown since it was established and what value do you think it’s added to telecoms? Mads A. Høgfeldt (MH): We have responded to changes in technology, market demand and customer expectation, our innovation, expansion, and development has in turn helped shape the industry. CM: Do you need to adapt your product portfolio for each client? MH: Emtelle‘s product portfolios are full Infrastructure solution in most cases, though we can ‘tailor make’ solutions for our clients should they wish to use some components from other suppliers or should they require Emtelle’s products to be compatible with existing infrastructure. CM: How has the challenge of introducing new products changed in the past ten years? MH: Emtelle sees a growing need for solutions and not just individual products – so we put for emphasis on solutions and also supporting our clients in deploying the solutions to a high standard to get maximum quality in a network build. CM: What have been your major achievements as a business since you were established? MH: Continuing growth in supplying our ducted, sub-ducted and blown fibre products to British Telecom, our growth in the UK Power sector and our achievement in supplying to over 70 countries around the world from our UK and Danish manufacturing plants. CM: Where do you expect the demand in telecoms products to be in 2017 (or beyond)? MH: De-skilling the deployment process more focus on “plug and play” products such as QWK connect -a double connectorised product from 42 | Emtelle. As Telecoms, especially the FTTH sector grows around the world, there will be a shortage of skilled engineers in some countries, so, the de-skilling is seen by Emtelle as an area we will focus on in the coming years. We already have products which are very easy to install, within our portfolio. CM: How does Emtelle’s international relationships help it develop new products? Do you share ideas between companies in each country, for example? MH: Yes, we have sales offices and partners all over the globe, getting the expertise from our head office and feedback from regions is invaluable to our business. We also hold regular sales events with most of the global sales teams so we can find out about and also develop new trends in the FTTX Passive fibre market. CM: Are there any major product lines from Emtelle you expect to make an impact in 2017? MH: Emtelle has a range of products coming out in the next year which are not our traditional range of products and therefore, there is no requirement to blow in any fibre. The products are pre-cabled and fibres are retracted from the microducts and then deployed to each home/ business by pushing, pulling or other low cost installation technique. Blown Fibre continues to be our largest selling product range for FTTX globally and will continue to be like this for many years to come due to its cost effectiveness and network flexibility. There are many similarities between our blown and non-blown solutions, meaning that we can still provide a dedicated duct pathway to a home or business without the need to always blow a fibre in. Our developments are gathering great pace in 2016 and the interest gauged from our customers and partners has been phenomenal so far. More information: Emtelle.com