IMC 2019, Day – 2 Hosted Global CEO’s Conclave And Sessions On mHealth

Posted by IMC

The second day of India Mobile Congress 2019 started amid much fervour, echoing the reverberating success of Day One. The second day kick started with a Global CEO’s Conclave and the inaugural mHealth sessions simultaneously. This day witnessed a profound congregation of renowned industry leaders sharing industry insiders and deliberating on the future of Digital Technology. Holding up to its repute of being a policy influencer, the mHealth track witnessed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare address the necessity of intervention in the National Health Policy. IMC is one of India’s biggest marquee Mobile, Internet and Technology events in South Asia and Day two received an overwhelming footfall of over 18000 number of people.

Day – 2 – Global CEOs Conclave – Summary of the key highlights  

The CEOs Conclave was hinged on the premise of “India’s Future: Intelligent, Immersive or Inventive?”; “Imagine the connected future” and “Technology Redefining Connectivity”.  The conclave comprised plenary sessions pertaining to the entire digital ecosystem, India’s journey towards digitization, 5G readiness and other emerging technologies.

Elaborating on the subject, Gopal Vittal, CEO, Airtel said, “In order to realise India’s digital dream, investments in the Telecom sector is of prime importance. Furthermore, telecom industry needs transitions that not only attracts good ROI for investors, but also attracts talent and retains them. The telecom ecosystem is a collaborative one and in order to make it more lucrative, we need consistent and enabling policies to make this successful. In view of the current developments, we can bring revolution over the next 5 years, however, it calls for a seminal change in our approach.”

Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India, was also a part of the conclave said, “More and more people believe that the future could be revolutionised with a combination of 5G, AI, AR, VR and robotics, which could propel India towards new India.”

Highlighting the role of social media in the future connected world, Ajit Mohan, CEO, Facebook India, said, “Over the last 4 years, great strides has been made in public infrastructure services side and operator’s network. India has the power to scale up like no other country in the world. We have the ability to absorb hard tech and consumers are also evolving in terms of their tech adoption behaviour. Identifying India’s socio-cultural and economic trends, Facebook has three focus areas viz. entrepreneurship and commerce; gender imbalance on internet and financial inclusion.”

Prakash Mallya, Managing Director, Intel India’s Sales & Marketing Group said, “India’s growth will be disruption led, non-linear and will grow two folds. This disruption will be led by high friction industry and Government’s digital initiatives. With that, telecom operators will lead the disruption, as they know their customers the most. However, having an IT mentality or IT approach, is what will lead telecom operators to lead the future growth of the country.”

Highlighting the roll of 5G in future connectivity, Mr. Rajen Vagadia, VP and President, Qualcomm, said, “The earlier 5G comes, the better! 5G will be a pivotal point in the history of telecom sector, which will create exponential growth. 5G connects everything to everybody and this will have a transformational impact. It will unleash opportunities that are immense. For example, today with 4G we can zero in on someone’s location for up to 10 meters, with 5G this will be reduced to

centimetres. That’s the level of accuracy 5G will produce. 5G will bring in a world, where virtually everyone and everything will be intelligently connected. 5G will be as pervasive as electricity.”

Summary: mHealth: as an enabler for Health Systems strengthening IMC 2019

Day two of IMC 2019 also witnessed the inaugural mHealth sessions. The session initiated by Grace Mathews, Program Director for India Mobile Congress, witnessed participation from industry veterans and experts such as Malcolm Johnson, Deputy Secretary General, ITU, Geneva; Prof. Adrian Park, Professor and Chairman, Depart of Surgery, John Hopkins University; Dr Ganesh Kathiresan, VP, Digital Healthcare, Reliance JIO; Dr. Devi Shetty, Chairman, Narayana Health; Ankit Tripathi, Additional Director, Centre of Health Informatics, Ministry of Health and family Welfare; Mr. Varin Jhaveri, OSD and Lead Innovation Strategy, National Health Authority among others.

Deliberating on surgical care and accessibility, Prof. Adrain Park, Professor and Chairman, Depart of Surgery, John Hopkins University, said, “33 million individuals face catastrophic health expenditures due to high costs of surgical care. Accessibility of surgical care through emerging technologies is possible and should be one of our major focuses. There is also immense need for surgical care in the remotest of areas in the world and there are technological solutions of all types’ that can reach these corners viz. hi-tech low cost solutions, low-tech low cost solutions and hi-tech and high cost solutions. Moreover, Robotic Surgeries, which are minimal invasive surgeries (MIS) and Digital Surgeries (MIS/Open) are the future of surgical care.”

Underscoring the burdens and challenges of healthcare in India, Dr Ganesh Kathiresan, VP, Digital Healthcare, Reliance Jio Infocomm said, “Historically the major healthcare burdens were acute diseases like diarrhoea etc. Today the major burdens are lifestyle diseases like heart attacks etc. and India is experiencing twin healthcare burden. However, in this world of anytime anywhere healthcare, in a country like ours, where we have many India-s within India – urban and rural, the challenge in better accessibility to healthcare in India is its massive size. Furthermore, the world of mobile connectivity and healthcare have been far apart for long as compared to other sectors like banking etc. and that should change.”

Ensuring interventions in healthcare policies, Ankit Tripathi, Additional Director, Center for Health Informatics, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare presented an agenda on national digital health blueprint. The blueprint, was targeted towards achievement of the National Health Policy 2017. In the session he also announced the setting up of 4 sub group committees for reforms and interventions in National Health Policy. He further ascertained that the committee is set to identify and define building blocks of the new policies drive by two principles viz. Domain and technology. 

Key Highlights of the Day-2

Vodafone Idea Ltd and Nokia

Vodafone Idea Business Services (VIBS), the enterprise arm of Vodafone Idea Ltd., the country’s leading telecom operator, today announced its partnership with Nokia to roll out software-defined networking in a wide area network (SD-WAN) services for start-ups and enterprises. Through SD-WAN deployment, VIBS will offer advanced networking and connectivity solutions and enable enterprises to dramatically increase the speed of deployment, flexibility and control. It is a software-defined network for digital business to securely access applications in a multi-cloud environment.

The services will be offered in partnership with Nokia and is built on Nokia’s Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform (VSP) that will provide enterprises with an application-driven network that seamlessly and constantly adapts to the real-time demands of cloud computing, mobility and digitization. This will further allow connections across the business and cloud to be intelligently and dynamically programmed from a centralized location. By using centralized software to manage the network, it becomes easier to control, more agile and ready to adapt to future connectivity requirements.

Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd.

After the successful launch of the next generation Wi-Fi technology products and solutions under its brand IO by HFCL on day 2 at IMC 2019 comprised of in-depth business meetings and product showcase of the newly launched product category. HFCL has displayed its globally benchmarked products and solutions under the brand IO; including Access Points (APs), Unlicensed Band Radios (UBRs), Wireless LAN Controller (WLC), Element Management System (EMS) and Cloud Network Management System (CNMS) at IMC 2019. HFCL also showcased their tri-radio 4X4:4 Outdoor Access Point compliant to the latest Wi-Fi standard Wi-Fi 6 with integrated/external antennae (ion12/ion12e) option, which is a top-of-the-line Outdoor Access Point with tri-radio concurrent operation in 2.4 and 5 GHz bands and peak throughput up to 5 Gbps. The product is WFA certified for Hotspot 2.0 and can cover wide range of indoor and outdoor deployment scenarios.

Huawei India

Huawei India Enterprise showcased 5G Powered India-Centric Solutions at India Mobile Congress 2019 today. Introduced the Wi-Fi 6 technology to accelerate Indian Enterprise into the New Digital Era. Committed to the vision of a New India, Huawei India Enterprise business featured a comprehensive range of the 5G powered ICT products for varied industries such as 5G + smart city, 5G + safe city, 5G + airport (boarding gate) and 5G + education (and remote classroom) aimed at a 5G accelerated Digital India. Bringing the next generation of wireless connections to India, Huawei introduced the enterprise grade Wi-Fi 6, powered by Huawei 5G, for high-scale commercial use of enterprises in India. Together with alliances and solution partners, Huawei demonstrated some of its solutions and use cases for multiple vertical sectors relating to smart cities, transportation, education and smart campus solutions at IMC 2019.

Sterlite Technologies

Stellar-Fibre Launch

STL launched Stellar Fibre, a path-breaking solution that will power the next-gen ultra-high definition future. The leading-edge innovation from STL’s optical design solutions guarantees best-in-class data transfer, negligible data loss even with high fibre bends, and compatibility with all fibres in use today.

MantraPODS launch

STL launched MantraPODS, a programmable open disaggregated solution for networking that completes the fully integrated FTTxMantra solution launched in IMC 2018. FTTx MANTRA is an end-to-end FTTx-as-a-service solution that enables swift roll-out of Fibre-to-the-Point (FTTx) networks. With Programmability at the core of the network, PODS brings more flexibility and service excellence to data networks.

LEAD 360^o 2.0

STL unveiled its second generation of Hyperscale Network Modernisation solution – LEAD 360^o 2.0 which comes with special features like robotics cable blowing and AI bots and further accelerates the deployment of smarter networks of tomorrow. LEAD 360^o 2.0 combines the potential of cutting-edge service engineering and highly orchestrated fibre roll-outs to deliver smart networks of tomorrow.

SENSRON+

STL’s Sensron+ is an industry first, end-to-end solution for critical infrastructure security. It leverages the power of hybrid sensing technologies like Fibre, Radar, Lidar, Sonar, combined with Big data and analytics and the most advanced Command and Control Centre to deliver 360-degree solutional awareness and an unparallel “threats to response” mechanism.

Infinera

Infinera, a global networking solutions provider, brings to India Mobile Congress cutting-edge technology advances that are powering network transformation and enabling a new generation of services, including 5G. From Instant Bandwidth and Auto-Lambda to cognitive intelligence and disaggregated edge routing, Infinera’s end-to-end solutions deliver industry-leading economics and performance in long-haul, subsea, data center interconnect and metro transport applications. Experience their innovations and see how they are laying the foundation for the The Infinite Network – extending high-bandwidth solutions everywhere, providing an infinite pool of always-available connectivity, and enabling service activation instantly.

VVDN

Fronthaul with ORAN over eCPRI (7-2 splitup option)

VVDN is demonstrating 5G fronthaul termination solution based on Xilinx FPGA.  The solution is O-RAN 7-2x compliant split up transporter over eCPRI. Each fronthaul can support upto 8 layer uncompressed IQ data. Each layer is 100 MHz bandwidth.  This allows telcos to leverage the bandwidth of the fronthaul making it as catalyst, which would help, build robust 5G network infrastructure.

Vermeo Card

VVDN is showcasing its Vermeo card which is a dual FPGA solution architecture: RFSoc and MPSoc. The Vermeo Card is targeted for Telco Application.  Below are the uses cases supported:

• • Layer 1 High Phy + Fronthaul with ORAN over eCPRI (7-2 splitup option)
  • Layer 1 High Phy + Layer 1 Low Phy + Fronthaul with ORAN over eCPRI (7-2 and 8 splitup option)

SmallCellVVDN and Xilinx are showcasing L1 Solution for 5G small cell using Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC with integrated DFE and L1 stack in the same device. The solution will support 4T4R making it ideal for

typical small cell deployment. The solution is targeted to accelerate operator’s time to market for 5G Small Cell solution.

Whale Cloud Technology Co., Ltd

Whale Cloud, a subsidiary company of Alibaba Group and a global leader in digital transformation, unveils 5G Operation Map at this year’s India Mobile Congress 2019.

5G is the catalyst to accelerate the digital society transformation. In the 5G era, operators will be the technical center of the whole society’s digital transformation. Whale Cloud has developed the 5G Operation Map to guide CSPs to better operate the 5G network and business, speed up the returns of 5G investments, and improve core competence.

The 5G Operation Map is designed to support operators in different stages of the 5G network deployment. The map contains four key capabilities required for successful 5G monetization:

• Center of intelligence can provide advanced data analytics and AI technology; help operators build intelligence capability for network and business operation.
• Center of Operation focuses on comprehensive 5G network management including planning, orchestration, network slicing and operation management; also provides the API platform to open IT& Network capability to ecosystem partners.
• Center of Ecology builds a digital ecosystem for various industrial customers from business onboarding, marketplace to revenue management support.
• Center of Value maximizes the value of ecosystem partners online and offline channels and customers by using digital technologies and innovative business model.

In addition to the 5G operation map, Whale Cloud also presented its digital telco transformation approach  Digital Telco Maturity Map (DTMM),  case-proven AI and big-data platforms for the telco industry, innovative Telco New Retail and Digital Sales Channels Management solution, and smart city solutions empowered by the Alibaba technologies and practices.―CT Bureau