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Desh Ki Digital Udaan

The title of Episode 5 was Mobile services – Value creation & inclusion. The webinar was organised by India Mobile Congress, a digital technology forum organised by DoT and COAI. Communications Today was a media partner.
The speakers at the webinar for this session were Dr. Ajay Kumar, IAS, Union Defence Secretary, Government of India; Ravinder Takkar, MD & CEO, Vodafone Idea Ltd; Sanjay Mashruwala, MD, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd; Sanjay Kapoor, Entrepreneur; Lt. Gen. Dr. S P Kochhar, Director General, COAI; Sanjay Kaul, President, Asia Pacific & Japan, Service Provider Business, Cisco Systems; and Ajai Puri, Chairman, COAI and COO-India & South Asia, Bharti Airtel Ltd.

In today’s episode titled Mobile services, value creation and inclusion, we will be discussing how mobile services have added value to everyone and everything and continue to keep us connected. 2020 marks the completion of 25 years of mobile communications in India. STL and Nokia are also celebrating 25 years in the Indian telecom and technology market.

This is a huge moment for the industry and that is what the Desh Ki Digital Udaan series is all about. The objective of this series is to discuss the roadmap and possibilities for the next 25 years and how India is poised to become a world leader in the areas of telecommunications and technology.”

The spokesperson is Neha Rathor, Director, ADI Media Pvt. Ltd.

“With over 650 million internet users, India is the second largest online market in the world, ranked only next to China. Of this over 96 percent use mobile internet. Despite the large base of internet users, the dichotomy is that the internet penetration rate in the country stands at approximately 50 percent. This lack of connectivity not only excludes individuals from opportunities to overcome the social and economic development but also limits the ability of the government to effectively support the populace. According to research, Indians consumed about 12 GB data per month on an average in 2019, the highest in the world. While huge strides have been made in the digitization of platforms for areas like healthcare, banking and finance, agriculture, education, and retail using emerging technologies like AI, IoT, blockchain, AR, VR, ML, Big data, and now 5G, there is yet a lot of ground to cover in terms of creating value. As an industry, we are working hard to overcome the barriers of mobile internet adoption by improving access to affordable devices and data plans, building digital skills, and investing in network infrastructure and local digital ecosystems, to make services more relevant. And ensuring that the internet is safe and secure to use. This pandemic has reiterated that mobile services are an essential part of our life. Connectivity opens a window to the world over and above the limits of geographical and physical boundaries.

Let’s ensure that together we continue to drive digital inclusion for all and deliver on the promise of a web that drives social economic benefit for the nation as a whole.”

The spokesperson is SP Kochhar, Director General, COAI.

“We are truly proud of our telecom industry, which over the last 25 years has made a global mark. And we have over 1.2 billion mobile phones, with more than half of them being smartphones. We have the lowest rates in voice telephony and for internet connectivity and are the largest generators of data. Various projections indicate that data has the potential to contribute USD 500 billion to GDP. Mobile telephony and connectivity contribute immensely to the overall governance of the country.

Services are reaching the doorstep of people, be it in the form of DBT, digital payments, government certificates, identity in the form of Aadhar, and real time Aadhar authentication, the list is endless. While the Digital India program has made great strides, the backbone on which this program has been successful has been provided by the telecom operators.

The new technologies are changing the landscape in all aspects of life, including defense. In the last 10 years, new technologies like AI, IoT, blockchain have redefined modern warfare. And with the huge, strong pool of talent that India has including our engineers and software industry, we have a great opportunity to leverage our capabilities in digital technologies to develop the defense industry.

Under the Atmanirbhar Bharat scheme, we have seen tremendous transition and growth in the electronics manufacturing industry.  The mobile phones have graduated from contributing less than five percent of the requirement produced in India, to now manufacturing a large number of phones and exporting too.

Defense industry shall call on the strength of the electronics and software industry, and we are looking to leverage on their strengths. The defense industry holds tremendous potential since the government has also opened the doors for exports of defense products and increasing the FDI limit upto 74 percent on the automatic route.

Ministry of Defense has been taking several steps. To cite an example, we have created software defined radios which are serving the needs of the three armed services. The radios have been designed indigenously, including the chip and the radio. And various form factors are being addressed for the software-defined radio. Standardization is also being initiated by the ministry so that the radios bring in compatibility and interoperability.

Another initiative, particularly relevant is the large number of startups that have been encouraged under iDEX.

Nearly 1000 startups are engaged in this ecosystem, fostering innovation & technology development in defence and aerospace. They are solving several problems, that were taking years to solve, and saving hundreds of crores of rupees in the last one or two years.  Buoyed by the success of these startups, we are continuously in process of expanding our interaction with the startups.

In the Defense Acquisition Procedure 2020, released a couple of weeks back, there are several industry-friendly procedures, provided especially for startups and for the software and digital industry. A special chapter is devoted on the electronics and software industry, listing all the capabilities that exist in India and the solutions that will necessarily be sought from them, rather than being imported. This will provide a tremendous boost to players working in various control management systems like fire control systems, electronic warfare systems, and other network operating network-centric operations.

We are also very keen to develop AI capabilities in the defense sector. A high-level defense AI committee has been set up with Raksha Mantri as chairman. All the defense PSUs are working along with the industry and startups, and in some cases also with academia, on AI specific projects that will enable them to make new AI technologies they can offer to the armed forces.

Unmanning is becoming an important feature of defense. As in the past, defense shall continue to vacate spectrum so that they may be swapped and used for civil applications. This has also helped the growth of mobile telephony. And I assure you that this cooperation and collaboration between mobile telephony and defense will continue. And we look forward to even further glorious growth of mobile telephony.

Today, we are seeing increasing success in developing indigenous 5G solutions. I hope that by the time 6G comes, we would be able to produce at least 50 percent of the technologies indigenously, and by 7G, a majority of them. I also hope our industry and academia will jointly be able to participate in a much greater manner in contributing to global standards in cellular technologies in the coming years.”

The spokesperson is Dr. Ajay Kumar, IAS, Union Defence Secretary, Government of India.

In the last 25 years, the telecom sector has brought about tremendous transformation connecting over a billion Indians with 2G, 3G, and 4G services. And fiber for high speed broadband has been laid across the length and breadth of the country.

This has ushered in several disruptive technologies, a vibrant startup ecosystem, and brought about socio-economic development of unprecedented scale across the nation. It has been a critical driver of the country’s economy propelling India to amongst the top five economies of the world, and also becoming a global change agent.

With one of the largest network infrastructures in the world, connecting 1.2 billion Indians across over 500,000 villages, the telecom networks in India are now witnessing the highest data consumption. Operators like Vodafone Idea have ensured telecom connectivity to reach the remotest parts of the country, empowering hundreds of millions of people and bringing about a positive impact in our society and communities. Offering services at the world’s lowest tariffs, the Indian telecom market has made the country democratic, like never before. In fact, no other technological tool in human history has defused the rich-poor and urban-rural divide than mobile phones. With pan-India 4G networks and half the population already using smartphones, and the penetration of smart devices continuing to grow rapidly, more homogeneity in a heterogeneous Indian market can be expected in the future.

2020 not only marks the completion of 25 successful years of mobile telephony and digital services but in many ways has also been the year of a transformational shift. The telecom industry has been at the forefront of the disruption caused by the pandemic, be it work, entertainment, education, e-commerce, online healthcare or just social connectivity. In times of social distancing telecom networks in India have been the lifeline of the country. The unprecedented global health emergency has been taxing networks and platforms to the limit, as people and businesses are shifting to additional means to manage their work, leading to an unexpected surge in traffic and access demands.

At VIL, not just our networks but even our teams stretch themselves to keep India connected during lockdown. I’m extremely proud of our network warriors who worked in difficult situations and lockdown conditions to provide uninterrupted connectivity and services to individuals and enterprises.

The pandemic has shown that broadband connectivity is now absolutely critical to keep the economy running and has led to a digital thrust like never before. I see this as an opportunity for telecom operators to cater to the growing demand. In this crisis, the task is cut out for telco leaders, i.e. to increase network bandwidth, leverage digital technologies, to get to the roadmap of 5G to support customers and facilitate business continuity. This is imperative to help India achieve its economic targets and be a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025.

VIL is also playing an important role to help realize the Digital India dream. Completing the world’s largest telecom integration, we have now more than doubled our data capacity and are delivering more than two times faster speed to our latest V-GIGAnet network. Vi is now the fastest and most consistent 4G network in the country as per Ookla. Vi is a future-fit digital network built on many principles of 5G architecture. It is a result of the largest deployment of 5G running technologies, such as massive MIMO, DSR, small cells, Open RAN, universal cloud, and many more. At VIL, we have one of the largest deployments of big data platform on open source framework, through our technology partner, IBM. This is helping us provide better, faster, and superior customer experience and prepare for the future.

Our mobile, technologically based solutions are showing positive impacts in the field of agriculture, education, financial literacy, livelihood creation, and even women’s safety.

As we move into the next decade, the future-connected India will be built on technologies as M2M, IoT, AI, blockchain, and robotics. We are already witnessing a lot of innovation in these areas and a thriving OTT eco-based system on solid foundations of telecom networks. The enabling and progressive policy, the NDCP 2018, highlights the needs to leverage these emerging technologies to create robust, digital infrastructure in the country. It emphasizes on the need for a financially strong telecom sector to enable an atmosphere of investment for other critical services like education, health, banking, and e-governance to become easily accessible to all Indians. It also underlines the need for speedy implementation of right-of-way guidelines across states and districts. These are all prerequisites for 5G in India.

In fact, before we launch commercial 5G services in India, we need to ensure that the ecosystem is developed, and specific use cases established. The planned 5G trials will help identify such use cases. With this, issues related to security and data privacy also need to be addressed at a regulatory level in a manner that does not impede growth and innovation and yet remains robust.

I am confident that with government support, a light touch regulatory approach, and a vibrant private sector participation and investment, we will realize the Digital India dream.”

The spokesperson is Ravinder Takker, MD & CEO, Vodafone Idea Ltd.

“The last 25 years have been truly remarkable for the Indian telecom sector. No doubt, the seeds of change were sown when private sector players were issued the licenses for telecom services, particularly mobile services. Prior to that, availability of telecom was restricted to a privileged few. Even later, for the first few years, mobile services and devices were sufficiently expensive to serve only such privileged few. But once affordable devices and tariffs were introduced, telecom growth had no limits. While in early 2000 this was limited to voice services, same growth was experienced for 4G data services in second half of this decade, once affordable devices and tariffs were introduced. This phenomenal growth of telecom services experienced twice in the past two decades can surely be claimed as one of India’s greatest success stories.

With a subscriber base of over 1.2 billion and around 600 million 4G subscribers, we have emerged as second largest telecom market in the world. Like many other developing countries, India is truly a mobile-first nation. For majority of Indians, mobile phones are the only gateway to internet-enabled services. The contribution of mobile-based services in the socio-economic development of the country has been unprecedented. The advent of newer, mobile broadband technologies like 4G LTE has further catalyzed the telecom landscape and ushered in the new wave of data revolution in India. 4G has unleashed enormous opportunities and enabled digital delivery of services across all sectors including banking, education, healthcare, e-commerce, infotainment, governance and so on. And the past few, rather unfortunate months have further shown the criticality and importance of mobile data services. It is hard to imagine what would have been the state of the nation after these eight COVID months, had common people not had access to inexpensive and dependable mobile data services. Thanks to the widespread reach of 4G services and affordable data tariffs, today, we can proudly boast of being the world leader in mobile data consumption, even surpassing countries like USA and China. The average mobile data consumption is over 12 GB per month, by far the highest globally, and expected to double over the next five years, trebling to reach 21 exabytes per month, with average customer traffic of 25 GB per month.

Jio has been at the forefront of digital transformation in India and has been working persistently toward expanding the reach of mobile broadband across all segments of society and all areas of the country. We recognize the importance of robust digital connectivity and the immense potential it has in bridging the inadequacy of physical infrastructure in the country. We are truly committed to the government’s vision of broadband for all, as outlined in NDCP, and are working relentlessly to make mobile broadband accessible to every Indian. It gives me a great sense of pride to see Jio emerge as the digital backbone and enabler for around 400 million Indians.

In less than four years, we have practically covered almost the entire population of the country. The fact that over 40 percent of our subscribers are from rural and remote parts of the country is a strong testimony of Jio’s commitment toward providing all-inclusive and equitable access. We are constantly working to enhance our digital offering to offer maximum value to our customers.

It is unfortunate that despite the rapid stride in technology evolution, 300 million subscribers continue to use 2G technology, which deprives them from the benefits of our honorable prime minister’s vision of Digital India. It is important that industry and the government put in concerted effort to accelerate their migration to 4G and beyond.
We believe that 5G and frontier technologies like AI, IoT, Big data, and cloud services have enormous potential and can significantly contribute in fueling India’s economy. Recognizing this potential, Jio is creating world-class capabilities and compelling digital solutions, harnessing the transformative powers of these next generation of technologies. These solutions span across governance, healthcare, education, financial services, new commerce, agriculture, security, just to name a few. And our prime objective is to make this accessible to individuals, communities, and businesses across the entire country and to all segments of the society.

In alignment with government’s vision for an Atmanirbhar Bharat, Jio has successfully designed and developed a complete 5G solution from scratch, creating 100 percent indigenous technology. Once this solution is adequately scaled up and commercially ready, in 5G space, it will give India a significant edge over other countries.

To drive the next wave of digital transformation, we need to collectively work on important priorities. Creating a conducive environment that can pave way for the much needed investment in upgrading and advancing the digital communication infrastructure; a judicious, spectrum policy with a clearly defined spectrum roadmap giving at least a 5-year horizon; conducting spectrum auction every year, offering adequate quantum of spectrum in various bands; significantly increasing the level of fiberization; and streamlining the ROW processes, are a few essential  ones.

As we gear up to embrace newer technologies like IoT, Big Data, AR, VR, and blockchain, it becomes imperative to enhance digital trust and ensure that the concerns around data protection, data privacy, and security are adequately addressed through the right policy framework. What is equally important that these provisions of data protection and security need to be applicable for all players in the digital ecosystem and not just the service providers.

In conclusion, I would say that the unprecedented times of COVID-19 pandemic have made us realize the importance of being self-reliant as a nation in every way. And, this is an opportune time for India to lead and attain digital supremacy. With the right policy environment and with the collective efforts of the government and industry, I am very confident that we will be able to achieve this.”

The spokesperson is Sanjay Mashurwala, MD, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.

“The telecom sector having shown resilience during these times of global crisis is now making strides toward excellence, to meet the goals of Digital India by providing high-speed broadband connectivity to each and every one. The telecom network is functioning like a nervous system of the human body.

Airtel’s growth story of 25 years is synonymous with India’s telecom revolution and we are immensely proud of having built an institution that has empowered hundreds of millions of Indians with affordable connectivity, from mobile services in just one circle to becoming a leading global telecom company with operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa over these years. Airtel has now become a force to reckon with in the emerging telecom markets and its network is covering billions of people.

We have always believed that mobile technology has a great potential in India and serves the large cause of nation building. And now after witnessing the unprecedented growth, scale, and transformational impact our services have had on the entire landscape of the country, Airtel is truly proud to have been at the forefront of the growth story.

Today the country has over 1 billion mobile phone users and connectivity has reached deep into our villages and rural areas with highly affordable mobile plans. From being an alternative to fixed line connections, it is today the backbone of e-commerce, e-governance, e-education, e-health, and empowerment of citizens at large. Mobile phones have become multifunctional and center to the life of every human being. And most importantly with data becoming affordable it has become a catalyst for enrichment and empowerment of the average Indian in ways that were unthinkable 25 years ago, or even five years ago.

The momentum has now shifted toward data, currently led by 4G services and moving toward 5G. While voice will continue to connect millions, mobile devices with high-speed mobile internet are now a lifestyle enabler, delivering services from the banking, commerce, education, and health sectors. And 4G networks are now accelerating India’s journey toward becoming a digitally integrated economy. As smartphones are becoming more affordable, the uptake of data services increasing for Airtel Data Services are growing manifold every year and we expect this trend to continue for many years to come.

While it’s clear that the worst may be behind for India’s telecom industry, we are yet to emerge from the woods. India still has some of the lowest data tariffs globally, and the industry is barely able to cover the cost of investments. It requires much more support to repair the deep damages to its finances and make it viable for telecom operators to invest in future technologies.

The recent tariff increase has provided some cushion to the industry. However, we are still way below the viability levels. The government must also look for key policy reforms, such as rationalization of regulatory levies, fixation of tariff flow for a few years, review of the right-of-way policies, liberalization of backhaul spectrum by allocating E&V band to telecom service providers, creating a fiber authority to promote fiber sharing, as well as close long-standing legal disputes amicably to promote further investment and faster development of telecom infrastructure. These urgent interventions will ensure that we have a viable industry structure, which is essential for serving the digital aspirations of a billion-plus Indians. And will help India achieve its aspiration of USD 5 trillion economy.

I’m sure that the next 25 years of mobile phones in India will be a complete game changer and will only get more relevant to the life of every citizen serving most of his social and economic needs.”

The spokesperson is Ajay Puri, Chairman, COAI and COO-India & South Asia, Bharti Airtel Ltd.

“Those associated with the telecom industry, including me, will cherish the 25 glorious years of Indian telecommunications all their lives. It’s been a great journey from a duopoly, to an oligopoly, to perfect competition, back to an oligopoly, and now once again the underlying threat of going back to a duopoly, the second one being a state incumbent, still grappling with older technologies.

Consolidation has not been limited to the telecom service providers, it includes the passive and active infrastructure providers. And finally, the order of the devices, which have been an integral part of this industry have undergone a change. The world is polarized on Android and IoS, and the days of Nokia-Ericsson-Motorola-Chinese brands dominance have undergone a significant change, be it in manufacturing or branding. And there are newer players that we all will experience over times to come.

As we moved from 3G to 4G, there had been a very different play and an ecosystem of access of devices, of content, services, storage, security, and analytics that cut across each element took over. Two new orders have emerged. Collaboration is poised to become more important than competing. And secondly, a new cardinal rule that the winner can’t take it all. At least it has not been witnessed till today. What happens tomorrow, we shall wait and observe!

With this in mind, the second big challenge that the industry is facing is the longevity of technology. Technology, that lasted for 10 years, is today good for maybe only four to five years. That puts a lot of pressure on the balance sheets and cash flows of the operators. And leads to consolidation, as the third and fourth players, ranked by their balance sheets, find it difficult to keep pace with this technology. This leads to a disruption in the structure of the market.

5G is a technology that shall bring a very different type of an experience. Firstly, 5G is about high speed, low latency, internet of things, and the need for a lot of spectrum and investment. It has to be looked at very differently from the earlier strategy of rolling out a technology and then figuring out how to monetize it. Monetization of investments must happen from day one, as the longevity of technology will be much shorter now. There are not too many monetizable use cases as of now. Autonomous cars etc. are not use cases that will apply to India in a hurry. It will take a long time before we get there, because our environment doesn’t support that necessarily. Will there not be any use cases? No, that’s not true, there will be use cases but those use cases will have to be thought through, and that shall happen when the telcos become capable of offering solutions. Operators will have to undertake the journey from being an access provider to becoming a solution provider. Its already happening in other parts of the world.

The other big problem is that with more and more wireless on high-speed technology as 5G, the fiber gets invoked. And as there is not enough fiber, especially for intracity and backhaul, it will not be possible to do justice to the 5G experience.

The third very important aspect is that all the operators are used to being B2C. But the 5G game is about B2B. Catering to a factory, a city, rolling out solutions for an enterprise require a very different skill. The operators will need to bring that to the fore.

And the biggest problem is, that their buyer may not pay proportionately for the data he consumes, for all these additional multiples. A lot of it is changing because of the form factor, what was HD yesterday, is 4k today, 8k tomorrow and 16k some other day. The customer will not be prepared to pay 20 times over for the same content. And that will pose a big challenge. And for the passive infrastructure that needs to go up, including more towers and tower infrastructure. Look at China for example. They’re already adding about 2-3 million towers. No doubt, India has a smaller geography, but the 200,000 towers that India has, will not be able to bridge the gap that is required for a great customer experience on 5G.

To balance the equation, make sense of the newer technology and bring in the newer order, a lot needs to be done, both at the operator’s end and at the government’s end.

The operators will need to take up the prices in this industry drastically and generate at least USD seven to eight per customer, per month.

The government will need to get the prices of the spectrum down to make it viable for the operators to deploy 100 Mbps of spectrum for 5G for each customer to be able to adopt the technology. Also, the government levies for the industry are far too high, compared to any other part of the world, and they need to come down. And finally, to get the infrastructure up, both outdoor, indoor, and fiber, we will need to ensure that we are able to share it, monetize it in a fashion where customers can get affordable services and a great experience going forward.

In the backdrop of how we have succeeded before, I am confident that India will become contemporary on technologies and telecom experience, at par with the rest of the world.”

The spokesperson is Sanjay Kapoor, an entrepreneur. He has been Chairman, Micromax Infomatics Limited and CEO India & SA, Bharti Airtel Limited.

“With 2020 a new era has been kick-started, the digital era, one of Industry 4.0, that will drive the industry and truly digitize the country for the greater good.

And service providers remain a very critical foundation for the digital data to happen. They need to transform and be ready to capture the industrial revolution and the opportunity it brings.

I believe, the transformation will be needed on multiple fronts. The operators will need to look at their network architecture. Currently, it is a pretty complex network, that got built in layers. It started with 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G, and now 5G. Every time a new G was introduced, the network was adjusted, and new nodes brought in to cater to the requirements of that particular technology. This resulted on it being a large guzzler for OpEx and CapEx. As a first step, the networks need to be flattened, made intelligent, cost of production made more efficient, thus preparing for the data tsunami that shall unfold.

After this, there will be a need to push IP all the way to access. So that the network is end-to-end, there is telemetry, automation, and SDN-play cutting across the network. A foundational platform will have been created ready to move into the digital era.

The second transformation has to be from data centers, a shift from creating the monolithic central data centers to the centers of data, that have an ability to capture the data as it gets produced. For, if the data analytics and the data treatment are delayed, they are perishable and reduce in value. This requires repositories at the edge of the network, to collect the data, apply analytics, draw insights, make it secure, and extract value. Terms as mobile edge compute, multi-service edge compute, caching all are being thrown around for a facility needed at the edge of the network to create and capture the data that drives instant gratification toward the consumer or enterprise the service is offered to.

The third, but very important piece of the transformation is uberizing the OSS/BSS system, that in the last two decades has been very cumbersome. To create instant gratification, the service creation machinery needs to be transformed, almost tuned to every consumer, enterprise, small business it serves. Agility in the OSS/BSS need to cater for that. This includes zero-touch provisioning, self-provisioning, self-billing, and self-management.
And the last one, that cuts across these three transformation layers is security. And security has to be ubiquitous. There could be phenomenal firewalls in the data center and the network. But you are as good as your security, from the end point, all the way to the core network.

Only once this transformation has been executed, the network as an open network architecture created, can it evolve into a digital platform, one that will have the ability to create digital value for every customer, be it a consumer, a small business, or a large enterprise.

And this transformation calls for investment, that prepares the vendor for the next decade. To become efficient with an ability to be service-agile, gives immense possibilities to support instant gratification, a pre-requirement in the digital era.

So, what are we gaining out of this? What is the value creation piece? It is our vision that the SP networks and enterprise networks have to converge. With 5G, technologies as Wi-Fi 6, AI, ML and others, are creating a possibility of extending the network all the way to the enterprise, any type of enterprise. We are creating digitization across the enterprise, and at the same time also creating enormous amount of efficiency and value creation.

At Cisco, we are experimenting, with almost 5000 ideas, use cases across all 10 enterprise verticals, be they financial institutions, logistics, mining, petroleum, automotive, manufacturing, or banking. A lot of experimentation will need to be done.

And players like TSPs, access providers, and enterprise verticals will have to come together in a cohesive way to experiment and find those value-creating killer apps in a 5G context. But once that is done, tremendous value will have been created. Automation, productivity gains, almost negligible fault outcomes, huge reduction in cost, will lead to an enormous amount of value creation. And these savings can then be shared across the ecosystem.

But the context has to be larger. What does it mean for our nation, our country? If we succeed with digitization in the digital era, it can have an impact of a trillion dollars for our economy by 2030. Which is between 20 to 30 percent of the GDP. That is what this is all about.”

The spokesperson is Sanjay Kaul, President, Asia Pacific & Japan, Service Provider Business, Cisco Systems.

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