Digital India by CII

Digital India www.telecomlive.com 19 vertical as an industry. Now, shift is happening in Europe and India as well and therefore lines between these verticals are blurring. As a telecom operator we are getting into content, entertain- ment, finances. Device manufacturers were earlier only selling the devices but now looking at platform. Similarly, e-retailers who were only selling e-commerce earlier, now getting into app store, getting into billing, payment and messaging andsamethingishappeninginsocialmedia. Two types of images are coming out of internet. One is integrated internet and everybody is trying to be pushed into the additional services. Second is the aggregator space like Google. Are we ready to push the regulations into the current scenario, the answer is 'no'. We need new regulatory framework that takes out the fundamental shift that is happening in the industry because of internet. This new framework needs to be taken into account and developments, which is happen- ing due to new value chain. The new horizontal regulations need to come up anddefined. Forthat, we need to just define these regulations for that industry needs to sit down with the government and put these regulations in place and everybody move on to operate in this space with vertical lines gettingblurred. Beautiful example for this is payment bank defined by RBI. Payment bank space was not defined earlier. So, we have very pure hard core banking regulations, there were certain PPI which telecom operators were trying to follow. Then, we have payment bank regulations and payment licenses were issued. People who got these licenses are telecom operators, distribution companies and department of post. So, whosever go into this space, need to follow the regulations. It will incentivise the things and people will put in their investments. Good regulation can stimulate andspurthesector. In conclusion, we need to look at net neutrality and level playing field separately. Let the net neutrality streamlined. Till then, let us follow self-regulation, self-governance for another 12-18 months and if it doesn't happen then let regulatorstepin. I need to rollout half million network-neutral WiFi hotspots by 2020 Sanjeev 'Bobby' Sarin, Ozone Networks Ltd Ozone Networks came in 2008 to India, in advance of 3G auctions that were going to happen in 2009. Then the 3G auction got delayed and we felt that we were two years early into the market. And then networks were getting congested in2010andtrafficstartedcominginournetwork. We are building network to serve 700-900 mn people that probably is not connected to the internet. How many people can afford a $15 broadband connection in this country? Very small population can do. Then question arises why we are probably lowest in the world compared to any other country from the percentage standpoint. It is because operators like us and other large operators are struggling to get ROI back in the reasonable timeframe. Billions of dollars have been spent on licenses. Lot of money is getting into operators' networks because tariff is so low. Thenhowdoyoumakemoney. In my business in the Western part of the world, players like cafe, McDonalds, restaurants pay WiFi operators lot of money to operate the network. And that is why, we are able to deliver the quality network. But in India, sites don't pay anything to the operator. They expect people like us do the investment, do operations and on the top of it, provide free WiFi.So,lotofcreativityneedstogoinmakingmoney. I struggle with net neutrality thing myself. I need to rollout half million WiFi hotspots by 2020 because I want to provide the connectivity to the mass population. I have an agenda to do that. I want to connect and don't want pools of networks. I want to start with network neutrality. What's happening in the market in WiFi is that we are going back in time. When operators came into the country they all started having their own pools of towers because they thought it will give them competitive environment. But it doesn't give any competitive advantage to them. Most of them have sold tower business to the neutral players so that they can get access to mass towers in the country. We are doing the same thinginWiFi. We are building neutral public WiFi hotspots all over the country so that the operators can deliver back to the con- sumers. Having a situation where consumer going to CCD and registering itself and then again going to McDonald and again registering is what consumer hates. We should have a seamless service. When we connect a voice call we don't select a particular tower. Similarly for WiFi, you should go anywhere andallthe operators,building,etc.,andallshould happeninthebackendlikeitisdoneincellularnetworks. First let's talk about building network neutrality and this is about the mass population. We all complain about call drops and it's going to be worst with data connectivity. Let's getournetworkfirst. TelecomLIVE October 2015

Digital India by CII

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