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Telecom giants from the SAARC region gave some exciting ideas at the panel discussion held at the CEO Conclave 2007 in Katmandu on 'VAS and Content for Rural Areas'. Kasturi Bhattarjee, sr principal consultant, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the moderator, started the discussion by raising pressing issues surrounding content availability in rural areas. The discussion centered on how to prioritize content for the rural market without decreasing the ARPU, and how the content is going to serve as a messenger of social cause for the rural populace. Kasturi clearly pointed out that people sitting there were not doing charity but serious business. But, at the same time, they have a social obligation, which, if taken in the right direction, can turn out to be a good business prospect.

Debashis Sur, head, business development, Enterprise, Tata Teleservices, started the discussion by stating issues common to the SAARC countries, “If you look at the steep rise in the subscriber base and declining ARPU in the SAARC region, it poses a serious concern. Despite getting more customers, operators are loosing on the ARPU front,” Sur said. He strongly recommended that content can make a big difference to the whole scenario. Contents like healthcare, education, rural commerce, and disaster communication are truly essential for rural areas. The only thing operators need to work out is to make content available to the rural people, within a sustainable business model. He emphasized on aggregation in terms of content providers as well as sharing infrastructure. He put the ball in the regulators' court by saying that we, as operators, expect them to let aggregation happen.

Pradeep Roshan, Senior Manager - Marketing, Mobitel raised the affordability issue during the discussion. He said that in Sri lanka, content is available for the urban market. “The challenge for the operator is to make affordable content for the rural market and, at the same time, maintain the novelty of the content, and keep it going,” he said. Talking on convergence, Kenith Parkinson, VP-APAC, Amdocs, digital commerce division agreed that convergence is happening in the urban market but believed that given the growth potential, there is no reason why it should not spread its wings in the rural market. “Presently, cost comes as an obstacle but I am sure, by the time it will reach the rural market, there will be no cost issues,” he said.

Panel Discussion on 'Content and SAARC Synergy' was attended by (from L-R): Debashis Sur, head, Enterprise Division, TTSL; Pradeep Roshan, senior marketing manager, Mobitel; Navaid Khan, Global Director, Spice Telecom; Vijay Shekhar Sharma, MD, One97; Kasturi Bhatacharjee, head, National Practice, PriceWatersHouseCoopers; Salman Malik, project director, IT Ministry, Pakistan; and Kennith Parkinson, VP, Apac, Amdocs

Adding the content provider perspective to the discussion, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, managing director, One97, said, “In India, we are experimenting with matching demands of the people with delivering required content. We are trying out rural content and they are doing well.” On his experience, he said that content on entertainment has the highest demand in rural areas. He also suggested a new model of content for the people, by the people, which was well received by other panel members. On affordability issues, Navaid Khan, Global Director, Spice Telecom, presented an eye-opening view that affordability in rural area is not an issue. In fact, some of the rural areas have better affordability than the so-called urban areas. He urged the operators to focus on customized contents serving the actual requirement of people rather than content forced on them. “Thirty-five percent of rural India is living in urban areas and unfortunately, 90% of the content provided by the service providers are in English. Operators should provide localized content in their language if they really want to make profit and change the present scenario,” Khan said. Villagers or those from rural areas, living in urban areas, regularly send money to their villages and hometowns. The money transfer becomes costly in case of a low amount to be transferred. “If we can provide money transfer as part of the content, it will be great for them as well as a good revenue earner for operators,” Khan added.

Satya N Gupta, Chief Regulatory Advisor, BT raised the issue of revenue sharing between the content provider and the operator, which received maximum attention during the discussion. Presently, the sharing model is 20-25% to the content provider and the rest to the operator, which at times becomes a 1:9 ratio. “If a person goes for a 300 recharge coupon, operators believe that the person will spend that amount on talking and they (the operator) will receive maximum profit. But if the person uses any of the VAS services, the amount is deducted from his pre-paid balance and the operator has to share a percentage of the amount with content providers. This makes them unhappy,” he said. He suggested that there should be a different model to shell out money from the user's wallet directly to the content providers.

Amongst questions asked from the audience to the panelist, DPS Seth wanted to know the revenue model of the content providers.

Kumar Anshuman