SITM NATIONAL TELECOM SEMINAR: Communiqué – 07

“Service Oriented Growth- The Roadmap of Revenue”

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Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management (SITM) organized the XI National Telecom Seminar ‘Communiqué - 07’ at Symbiosis Vishwabhavan, Pune on 22nd & 23rd September 2007 on the theme- “Service Oriented Growth- the Roadmap of Revenue”. Chief Guest for the event was Mr. Umang Das, MD, Spice Communications Pvt. Ltd. The Guests of Honor for the event was Mr. .Kiran Anandampillai, Director Engineering, Onmobile Global Pvt. Ltd.
The highlights of the seminar are as follows -

Day1 ( 22ND September 2007)

Inaugural Session- “Infrastructure Sharing: The Perennial Growth Imperative”
Mr. Umang Das, MD, Spice Communications Pvt. Ltd.

Future growth of the telecom companies depends highly on the infrastructure development. We are aspiring to arrive at a network that allows seamless roaming. Profits will definitely improve if Capex moves towards Opex. The mobile teledensity across the country that is shown to be 18% does not show the real picture. The teledensity in the rural areas is just 3%. We face two challenges today, first is to explore the 800 million subscriber market, and second, to develop a world class infrastructure in the country. The challenge would be to still make profits while providing effective services to the customer at an ARPU of Rs. 250 per month. This can be made possible only through an infrastructure which is based on a shared model. India is a showcase for licensing. Issues concerning shortage of spectrum are not the concern of a country as a whole, but of the cities individually, to address which an integrated viewpoint of infrastructure sharing should be applied.
Regulatory Session-“Role of regulators in maintaining QoS”
M. C. Chaube, Advisor (QoS), TRAI

• Access penetration, increasing tele-density still remains the main focus. Thereby, the first priority is to ensure good connection, i.e., technical compatibility and good interconnection. This can be achieved partially by designing effective public awareness campaigns. The need is to balance rights and duties, i.e., there’s a need for investors to earn a fair return on their investments and from the customers perspective- he needs to pay rates that are as low as possible.

• There exists a vicious circle that involves low capacities to pay, low collection/recovery, low investment, low level of infrastructure, low level of maintenance. This vicious circle needs to be converted into a virtuous circle wherein the consumers will have a higher willingness to pay which would result in higher collections/recovery for the service providers. The main regulatory issue remains ‘seamless interconnection’ amongst different service providers and the price quality trade-off, which involves affordability issues for the consumers and that of adding on to the penetration and tele-density. i.e. tapping the semi-urban and the rural market.
• Good quality of experience can be achieved through proper consumer grievance redressal systems and enabling the customers to have information about the services being provided to them. Today we see severe competition amongst various service providers and this will ultimately take care of the issues regarding the quality of service.

Prévision’08: SITM Annual Telecom Forecast

SITM Annual Telecom Forecast was initiated in the year 2003 and is currently in its fifth year. It is a culmination of the collective endeavour of SITM students with 1500 man hours of efforts put in by them along with inputs by faculty, more than 800 alumni base and industry. Prevision covers ten major verticals- Global Economy, Global Telecom, Indian Economy, Indian Telecom, Mobility, Consumer Electronics, Communication Infrastructure, Telecom Technology, Broadband & Telecom Software.
This year Prevision-Annual Telecom Forecast was released in XI National Telecom Seminar by Mr. Virender Kapoor (Director, SITM), Mr Umang Das (MD, Spice Communications Pvt. Ltd.), Mr M.C.Chaube (Advisor, QOS, TRAI), Mr. Mahesh Prasad (President, Applications Solutions & Content Group, Reliance Communications), Mr. Kiran Anandampillai (Director, Engineering, OnMobile Global Pvt.Ltd.) & Mr. A Sethuraman (CMO South Asia,Alcatel Lucent).The Forecast is available on the college website www.sitm.ac.in for free download.

Keynote Address -“Targeting Bottom of the Pyramid: Strategies for Telcos”
Mahesh Prasad, President Applications Solutions & Content Group, Reliance Communications
Indian Customer base can be mapped into 4 categories of a Pyramid. First being the global Indians which constitute the top of the pyramid having characteristics such as having best education and skilled who are mimicking the consumer behavior of developed countries. Next category or the middle layer deals with aspiring Indians. They are well educated and are successful in their private business, and have shaped the industry in all aspects such as technology, services, marketing etc.
Next comes ‘The Bottom of the Pyramid’. This strata has a totally different requirement, different ability to pay at different levels but have exactly the same or the best expectation from service providers, application providers and communication industry. They are the quick learners; they leapfrog in the kind of services others are using.
Rural market constitutes about 70 % of Indian market. It may not necessarily be the poorer market. They consume less because of their economic constraints. Here the margins are less but is compensated with the high volumes hence creating a profitable segment for the service providers.
The four pillars that facilitate the rural penetration are Product and services, Handsets Dynamics, Pricing & Packaging and Marketing & customer strategies. Copying from western countries may not work for a developing nation like India and its untapped market i.e. the bottom of the pyramid.
“VAS Trends in India”
Mr. Kiran Anandam Pillai, Director Engineering, Onmobile Global Pvt. Ltd.
He observed the following 5 key trends in the market space.

• Using local language in a region as a medium can be a good strategy for marketing your services. A major challenge in providing content in different languages is provision of phonetic search facility.

• Another key trend observed is that it is important to simplify content discovery for results. The key is to give the users what they want, when they want it. For e.g. “Press * to copy” campaign to promote ring back tone saw a growth in RBT selection by 70% with a 42% increase in the number of subscribers.
• In a market like India, Low balance is the way of life.
• An operator cannot promote everything. A significant portion of VAS business depends on the operators. They sell over 200 VAS services. It is not practically possible for operators to effectively monitor all the services. So promotions must be focused on the top 5 revenue generators.
• Another key trend is mobile advertising. A key challenge is how to advertise on a mobile phone as customers tend to reject these advertisements. Still advertisers are keen on utilizing this medium and see it as an important source of revenue, although the model for mobile advertising is entirely different from that of internet advertising.
  The need of the hour is to identify the window of opportunity. Operators must explore the mobile entertainment market in the rural areas too. It is important that consumers must be able to identify with the service offering.

Service Oriented Growth- The Roadmap of Revenue

Mr. A. Sethuraman, CMO, Alcatel lucent, South Asia

• He touched upon various aspects such as trends regarding subscriber in India, technology as an enabler of services oriented growth, and also the benefits of services and application to society and also our economy.

• VOIP and other technologies can help achieve target subscriber base. He mentioned that growth is inevitable and although we have spectrum crunch in India, growth will be fuelled by fiber optics or any other technology.
• He discussed about the services evolution where in, he began with the share of fixed & mobile sector for the total revenue contribution. Clearly mobility leads with around 64% of the total revenue in 2007 and is expected to grab 72 % share in 2012. Presently the share of the non-voice services is 12% which is expected to 24% by 2012. VAS services with focus on content regarding infotainment would drive the industry in future. He also threw light on the technology as an enabler and how the technology will move to provide better ARPU. Broadband deployment will encompass GSM player going in for LTE, CDMA players to UMB and third option being Wi-Max. At the same time it should offer gamut of services using the common base station.
• Various applications such as E-business, E-employment, E-agriculture, E-science etc. will be the buzzword for the success.

Strategies adopted by successful Telcos
Chandru Bolaki, Director- Business Development & Regional head, West and South India, UTStarcom

Falling APRU is a major challenge to the operators. Hence they are looking at new sources of revenue like delivering innovative services like IPTV and Mobile TV to keep pace with the new generation of subscribers. The target is to provide all services on a single device. IPTV gives customers the power to view what they want. While better telephony is about improving voice quality, FMC helps in seamless integration of IP and wire-line networks. It will transform TV viewing in the same manner as web-browsers have changed the face of internet.

Emerging Mobile Broadband Technologies
Tarique Ansari, Technical Manager India- Carrier & Telecom, Radware
Today, our mobile phones have developed to support the use of web browser, e-mail support and enabled the use of mobile internet. The key issues that need to be addressed regarding mobile broadband are availability, performance and security. Also service providers need to work towards lowering the total cost of ownership for sustainable growth. As the fixed line and wireless ARPU are falling, we need to deliver and produce new services like You-tube, facebook, etc so as to maintain and increase the revenues.

Mobile Enabled Business Processes
L V Sastry, VP & Chief of Operations, Airtel Enterprise Services

Information is the key to success in any organization. The major constituents of a business process are data, information, knowledge and wisdom. Due to unstructured information systems, we have lost wisdom in knowledge, knowledge in information and information is lost in huge amounts of unstructured data. The important question to be answered is ‘Do we really need mobile enabled business processes or is it just another buzz word?’ If proper information was available whenever and wherever it was needed, it would entirely change the face of the organization. An important example is the police force of Bangalore, where technology proved itself an important instrument in enforcement of law and order in the city.
Although making the business processes mobile presents some major challenges specifically due to complete transformation of the information systems hardware and applications, it has path-breaking benefits. If properly planned, the getting the return on investments is only a matter of time.
Panel Discussion
“Delivering on the Broadband Promise: Services, Deployment and Directions forward”
PANELISTS:
Moderator- Sandeep Gupta, Associate Director, Proximity
Eaten Abraham, Head - Broadband Operations, Sift Ltd.
Chandru Bolaki, Director- Business Development & Regional head, West and South India, UTStarcom
Siva Ramamoorthy, Group Director & Head of Marketing, Tejas Networks
Mehul Kapadia, GM - Marketing, VSNL

Day2:

“Managing Services Outsourcing in Telecom VAS”
Mr. Pradeep Rao, Head Middle East North Africa and Asia, IMIMobile Pvt. Ltd.
VAS can be categorized into premium VAS and non-premium VAS. Premium VAS would include services like astrology, news, voice portals, SMS, WAP, etc. India is a huge potential market for outsourcing, management and aggregation of content. The 5 important delivery models that are available as options to the content providers are branding, content management, content platform, content delivery and connecting to the content partners.
Panel Discussion1: “Cashing in on Content Delivery”

Panelists:

• Anupam Goswami, Executive Editor, Business India Group

• Manoj Dawane, CEO, People Infocom Pvt. Ltd. (Mauj)
• Vishal Gondal, Founder & CEO, Indiagames Ltd.
• Bruno Goveas, Head-Product Management, Akamai Technologies
• Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & MD, One97 Communications
• Sujata Dev, MD & CEO, Time Broadband Services P. Ltd.
• Kapil Sood, Director - Telecom & Finance, Sun Microsystems India
• L V Sastry, VP & Chief of Operations, Airtel Enterprise Services
• Vikas Shah, President - Access Business Unit, TTSL
• David Aviv, VP – Advanced Carrier Services, Radware
• Milind Pathak, Co-CEO & Country Manager, Buongiorno

• Mr. Anupam Goswami started off by requesting Mr. L V Sastry to discuss the need for new content. Mr. Sastry drew attention towards issues related to bandwidth and content aggregation. When asked what kind of revenue can be expected over a medium term, Mr. Shah pointed out that the average customer was much quicker in adopting a mobile camera phone than he was in adopting a PC or internet owing to portability and accessibility of content. 7 to 12% of the revenue generated by a service provider comes from VAS services and it is expected to grow significantly.

• Manoj Dawane is of the opinion is content is meant for consumption by the consumers. Hence, the consumption pattern must be properly analyzed so as to remain competitive.
• Mr. Vishal Gondal says that there are limitations regarding production of content owing to consumer preference and choice. He must be given what he desires as consumer is the king.
• Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma added that with the passage of time lesser network dependent technologies will come up. They would enable broadband on mobile phones leading to a lot of content being accessed through mobiles.
• Mr. Milind Pathak as the demand for user generated content increases, consumer’s unwillingness to pay for content will increase. Consumer would eventually accept only that content which is given for granted. If content is the king, distribution will remain the emperor. A significant amount is invested in advertising this content. However, Miss Sujata Dev, is of the opinion that it is technology that enables the delivery of content. Content is superior when customized, regional content is in fashion today. Monetization of content is possible through effective protection systems. The largest challenge still remains the last mile bandwidth and rich media experience.
• Mr. Kapil Sood said that any enterprise takes an interest in the application of content only when people are ready to pay for it. Smart devices are already available in the market, hence for no reason for enterprise content not to take the capillary. Mr. Bruno Goveas said that to enable a service, the key requirement is software alongside infrastructure hardware and proper platform. Mr. David Aviv , however, says that there is an urgent need for change as 2G, 2.5G and 3G provide only controlled content and quality remains a concern.
  The panel answered queries from the audience regarding ownership of the customer, legal aspects of content delivery, and demand and supply of desired content.

Panel Discussion2:

Serving Customers the Outsource Way.

PANELISTS:
Ambika Bakshi, Correspondent, Zee News
Saumitra Wadalkar, Sr. VP CME, Patni
Snehal Shah, Sr VP & Head, Operations, Birla Sun Life
Bhaskar Ramani, Telecom Head, Virtusa India Pvt. Ltd.
Harshu Ghate, VP - Operations, KPIT Cummins
Sandeep Gupta, Associate Director, Protiviti
Harmeen Mehta, VP - Operations, HSBC
Anand Bagmar, Product Quality Engineer, Amber point
Mallikarjuna Rao, AVP Service Delivery, Idea Cellular

• Ms.Ambika Bakshi started the discussion by inviting Ms. Harmeen Mehta to start the discussion with the strengths of outsourcing. Ms Harmeen mentioned that the main aim of outsourcing is to cut cost. She gave an example of railway industry in Europe regarding maintaining SLA (Service Level Agreement) with customers helps them. In order to handle the Indian population she suggested maintaining the largest customer solution by embracing the corporate culture via change of individual behavior. She appealed that the customers should be aware of their rights and should make continuous efforts until heard. The service providers should have an obligation in this respect.

• Mr. Sumitra Wadalkar mentioned about the evolution of outsourcing from the traditional way to the current cost-reduction model adopted by companies. He mentioned about the 24/7 operations of the companies to bridge the time gaps internationally. He mentioned that currently the major telecom companies are service driven but with convergence to set it the scenario would change. The payment structure needs to be divided amongst various parts in the value chain. He feels that the telecom companies will take time to mature as far as outsourcing is concerned. Mr. Mallikarjuna Rao said quality has a price whether done internally or externally. He acknowledged that it is the customer who drives the industry.
• Mr. Anand Bagmar believes that customer services have improved in India but a lot of gaps are to be filled. He also suggested that the customer grievances should reach the top management and the latter should try to nullify the same. Mr. Harshu Ghate started by saying that cost reduction in outsourcing is only a year advantage. He also talked about preferences for automated services for fast and efficient services. He mentioned that when we outsource some work we expect the best from it.
• Mr. Bhaskar Ramani talked about the various reasons for outsourcing. He said that outsourcing is done for improving margins, maximization of revenue, meeting customer expectations and globalization. He suggested that the customers should identify that for which service they want which kind of customer service. He said that outsourcing is double edged and technology should be used to address the customer grievances properly. The customers need to be educated.
• Mr. Sandeep Gupta mentioned about the various advantages of outsourcing. He mentioned that it is high time that the standards of services should go up. He said that it always important to outsource jobs to people who are answerable.
  The panel answered queries from the audience regarding

• upper management’s concern on customers’ problems
• the testing of working of the new systems after being deployed
• whether the policies of the working system are well defined

Reality Bytes! Fixed Mobile Convergence
Madhwesh Kulkarni, GM & Head of OSS/BSS Practice, Wipro Technologies

• Looking at the challenges of customer care, if FMC is implemented straightaway, it would complicate matters. It should really be considered as packaging and bundling of multiple services. The objective must be to offer seamless services provided through a core service for which the service provider must be able to generate a converged bill. FMC ecosystem consists of fixed and mobile operators, ISPs, cable operators, who should all make a combined effort to make FMC a reality.

• The customers expect customization, blend of services, awareness, flexibility regarding devices and solutions, operating location flexibility, pricing models flexibility, simplicity of service administration, and simplicity in user interface. The major challenge for operators is to provide these services as a bundle owing to security issues, unification of devices, quality of service issues, management of services, bridging OSS/BSS, user acceptability, network transformation and integration, and regulatory issues.
• FMC is not a fad but a real customer expectation. It is not about technology but about provision of cost effective solutions.

  
  Regulatory Aspects of Convergence
  Deepak Maheshwari, Director - Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft India

  The need for regulation in the field of telecom arose with the need for fulfillment of policy objectives for provision of universal services to the end user. As players strive to move towards a ‘contestable markets’ that is a marketplace where a sustained or virtual competition exists, effective and efficient allocation of public resources like radio spectrum, numbering plans, etc becomes necessary. We must look ahead towards unification and transparency in policy making for implementation of services, maintenance of network neutrality, technology neutrality, security regarding network and devices, choice of connection and services and dispute resolution.

  Future Content Delivery Technologies
  Bruno Goveas, Head- Product Management, Akamai Technologies

  Content Delivery Networks present a hoard of opportunities for the new generation of entrepreneurs. No player in the market is capable of producing all the required services in the value chain. This is the reason, many of the processes are outsourced. Such trends give rise to newer opportunities. If one is able to gauge the need of the market and devise a solution to fill this gap, sustainability and profitability naturally follow. Our objective must be to reach to a ‘Glocal’ audience. We need to continuously engage the consumers in the development of new services. Rich internet applications have lead to disintermediation and a plethora of high-tech devices have increased the reach to a huge number of individual consumers.

  Impact of Convergence on Enterprise Mobility
  
  GK Chakrapani, Country General Manager, Enterprise Solutions, Nokia
  Unified communication is really about giving the best user experience through an easy user interface. The real challenges lie in implementation of secure systems, interoperability with existing IT infrastructure, managing the total cost of ownership, and availability of business applications and devices. Unified convergence is all about providing mobility while being simple and integrated.
  Panel Discussion: Convergence of Telecom, Media & Entertainment
  Panelists:
  Moderator- Mr. Anup Jayaram, Assistant editor, Business World
  Mr. Chakrapani, Country General Manager, Enterprise Solutions, Nokia
  Mr. A Govindraj, Head Product, IMImobile Pvt Ltd.
  Mr. Anand Raman, VP Mobile entertainment, Star India
  Mr. Kiran Sangoram, National Sales Manager VAS, Hughes Communication India Ltd

  • Mr.Anup Jayaram started by the sharing of opinions about the meaning of total convergence with respect to TV, internet and mobile being available one carrier and what consumer gains when this happens.

  • Mr. Govindraj said that consumer is at the epicenter of convergence. He mentioned that to a consumer convergence means availability and flexibility of choice. He talked about convergence of industries, devices and content.
  • Mr. GK Chakrapani talked about challenges in converged scenario. He mentioned that we should build a network that provides a great user experience. Quality of experience should improve. He believes Convergence is also about content distribution. Content should compel the users so that even if handsets change, content should remain the same.
  • Mr. Anand Raman said that user behavior dictates the consumption pattern. He also talked about opportunities in converged scenario. He said that there is a place for each party in the ecosystem and we are to provide collective effort to deliver end product to be consumed across all verticals.
  • Mr. Kiran Sangoram mentioned about how the enterprise segment has already adopted convergence. He also talked about retail segment in terms of convergence. He mentioned that we should come up with new applications and content in the converged environment.

    Thus the two day seminar concluded on 23Rd September 2007.