TLF India 2020: Connectivity Building India’s Digital Highway

The TLF India 2020 conference was held in New Delhi, India. Delivering the opening keynote on the future of connectivity, Satish Gopalaiah, Partner and Telecom Sector Leader, Deloitte India said that India’s market potential is undisputed. There will be over 1+billion users (1.1 billion in 2019), Internet connectivity was ~600 million in 2019.

Sanjay Kaul, President, Asia Pacific & Japan, Service Provider Business, Cisco Systems, presented on ‘Building the Internet for the future. The future of the Internet and 5G are seeing new normals, new participants, new potentials, partnerships and business models. Today, sensors, cameras, machines, etc., are connected to everything.

KS Rao, CEO Network Software and Services, STL, spoke on Unlocking the Internet 2.0! India can leapfrog all the technology. It can set a new trend for the global market. There should be innovative business models. Product engineering can be used to manage complexities. The government can provide effective regulations and policies. It can also educate people and help create awareness.

Sachin Kalantri, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Qualcomm India, said that the theme of this year’s MWC is limitless intelligent connectivity or LIC. Today, we are looking at a unified, future-proof platform in 5G. The entrepreneurs will think of coming up with new things using 5G. 5G has the ability to redefine industries. The ecosystem partners can collectively make it all happen.

Vinit Goenka, Member Governing Council, Center for Railway Information Systems, (CRIS), spoke on Data privacy issues on mobile networks. He said: “We have a 7S concept. Smile – does technology bring a smile to the common man? Savings – do we have savings? Speed, scalability, etc., are there.”

There was a panel discussion on Leveraging Digital Era Growth at the TLF India 2020. Presenting his thoughts, Shyam Mardikar, President and Group CTO, Mobility, Reliance Jio, said that more than 800 million Indians got connected over the last decade. We have moved on from hyper connectivity to hyper consumption. The journey can be more complex, and non-linear in nature in the future.

Anand Bhaskar, MD, Service Provider, Cisco Systems, said that we are building the Internet for the future. For SPs, in the context of digital, there are significant growth areas. There can be strong ecosystems from the customers’ standpoint. Enterprises have some great experiences to come up.

Ben Parker, CEO, Data Center Solutions, STL, noted that the last 10 years have been spent building hyperscale infrastructure. India is looking to achieve all that in the next five years. Leniency on part of the government can help a lot.

Rajesh Nambiar, Chairman and President, Ciena, said that there will be a whole new monetizing model for SPs. Can you really differentiate and deliver? Can you monetize much faster than the others? Can you deliver exceptional experiences? We are catering to the adaptive networks and delivering the new experience to consumers.

Sridhar Krish, COO, Tikona, noted that India has a 10X opportunity to connect homes. You can double the industry. The 4G experience is not that good in India, as in Europe. You need to get up to 100% fiberization. It is a supply problem in the country.

Rajesh Kalra, Chief Editor, Times Internet, said that there is 85-90% of traffic on the mobile phone. OTT and telcos need to collaborate. The quality of the network has to continuously improve as well. When more people get onto a network, where does the money come from, for improving the service? Telco networks have to be robust to survive. There needs to be much more collaborations.

Enterprise a game changer

At the TLF 2020, delivering an industry keynote on Service Orchestration and Close Loop Assurance in 5G, Azad Singh, Solution Specialist OSS/BSS and Orchestration, CMS, HPE, said that HPE can help with service orchestration and close loop assurance in 5G.

Arun Karna, MD and CEO, AT&T Global Network Services India Pvt Ltd said they come from the enterprise data business. Enterprise CIOs have three pillars: they are getting virtualized, are data defined and are shifting to the cloud. We are also seeing lot of IoT deployments. There is also an increase in IT assets. They are also looking at providing security.

Ashutosh Vasant, Director, POM, Railtel, said that the enterprise is a revenue churner for telecom. “We need to see are we getting what I am paying for? As Railtel, we invite you to join us. We have rolled out content on demand. The final money comes from the government. There is huge scope to make money with CPSUs.

Devendra Taneja, Founder and CEO, PC Solutions Pvt Ltd said that telcos have played little attention to the enterprises, focusing more on consumers. Enterprises are adapting, but telecom also need to play a leading role by developing an ecosystem. Telcos also have to link with multiple clouds. Issues need to be comprehensively addressed.

Manish Tiwari, Senior VP and CISO, Bharti Airtel, said there has been a huge revolution in services over the last two decades. IoT, cloud-based services built on a secure foundation, have the potential to transform our country’s economy. We can deploy IoT technologies to manage traffic. Telcos are playing a very important part. With IoT, you need connectivity, data centers, etc.

Maj Gen Ravi Chaudhary, Former Head, Digital Army Projects, said that telcos and SPs need to give more attention to the enterprises. Content and connectivity need to go together. The army had to have one organization looking after storage. You need to have firepower and mobility. The requirement begins from connectivity, to content, on to intelligence. There will be niche areas, such as more technologically- or entertainment-oriented. CPSUs have their own fiber.

Vikas Chhabra, Director, Service Provider, Cisco Systems noted that the enterprises have not really been focused upon so far. The focuse has been more on the consumers. Surveillance is very important in huge campuses. Telcos can step in here, as an example.

Unlocking manufacturing growth

There was another panel discussion on Unlocking Manufacturing Growth in India, at the TLF 2020 in New Delhi. It was moderated by Sukanta Dey, Strategic Advisor & Group COO, Infomo Global Pte Ltd.

Dey said that in the early days, the network providers drove the industry. Now, there are many. There are three trends: R&D. Are we spending enough money in internal designing? Where is the Indian telecom IP? Two, deregulation of telecom by 100%. We are in the middle of Industry 4.0 now. All of this will be delivered by the telecom infrastructure.

Ajey Mehta, VP, HMD Global (India & APAC), said mobile devices were literally used as bricks in the past. This is a very good time for India to manufacture. The mobile device ecosystem has developed very well in China. We need to do some things first. We need to open up the market. There should be ease of access. It provides a lot of opportunities to the others.

Ankit Agarwal, CEO, Connectivity Solutions, STL, said there is a tremendous role for manufacturing in India. The vision is to double our head count. We have invested almost Rs 1200 crores in our plant at Aurangabad. There is a general concern regarding how to provide the incentives around 5-6%. It is a connected ecosystem. In manufacturing, there are lot of imports in telecom.

Josh Foulger, Country Head and MD, Foxconn International Holding, India said that India was already exporting earlier. Developing the supply chain is critical. In mobile phones, we have 7 lakh jobs. The experience in India has been fantastic. Now, we are trying to Make in India 2.0 roll! We are also manufacturing some other products, beyond mobiles. Eg., servers, network equipment, IoT devices, etc., can all be made here.

NK Goyal, President and Chairman Emertius, TEMA said that we do have a success story in mobile manufacturing. However, we import over 60% from China. Is that the way to move forward? Next, what is Make in India? There is no definition. Next, comes technology. We still have to get the benefits of 4G, rather than look at 5G. Last, about IPRs. There are exceptional companies like STL. But, do we have access to the other markets?

Pankaj Mohindroo, Chairman, ICEA noted that there are some illusions regarding India. India is a small market, say, 5.4% of the global market. It is not a big market for manufacturing products. The only way to grow is to get a portion of the global market. Now, we are 3.2% of the world economy. We are 1/5th of China right now.

Ravi Shankar Rai, CEO and MD, Savitri Group, said the vision should be to create some employment opportunity for the masses. We have an opportunity to become a manufacturing hub. We have competition from the Philippines, Malaysia, etc. We need to evaluate what is required to be successful in manufacturing. We have good, economical manpower to make inroads. We need to convert the human resource into assets.

Rajan Mathews, DG, COAI noted that what we are hearing from the government is that they want to maintain a three-player private market. In USA, there was T-Mobile and Deutsche Telecom. Globally, the three-player market is optimal. The unexpected AGR has put the industry in a problem. There’s no going back on the quantum. It is time to redefine AGR. We also take responsibility for tariffs.

There were 13 category awards presented at the show. There were three jury awards as well.

Telecom Person of the Year – RS Sharma, Chairman, TRAI

Pathbreaker of the Year – Dr. Anand Agarwal, Group CEO, STL

Lifetime Achivement – Manoj Kohli, Country Head, Softbank India.

The Voice & Data 25 years special anniversary issue was also released at the event.

The Telecom Leadership Forum had Cisco as the Presenting Partner, STL, HPE and PC Solutions as Platinum Partners, Ciena and Qualcomm as Gold Partners, Savitri Telecom as Technology Partner, AT&T as Connectivity Partner, Indus Towers as Tower Partner, and Spectra as Network Services. ET Now was the TV Partner.

The event was supported by leading industry associations such as Acto, BIF, COAI, DUG, ISPAI, ITU-APT, TAIPA, and TSSC. TLF 2020 was graced by 150+ telecom leaders across India.