On 13–14 March, 2003, the capital city of Delhi saw CEOs and CTOs from the service provider/vendor industry and the enterprise user community come together on one platform—the Voice&Data CEO Conclave 2003. Key functionaries from govt/TRAI also participated in a significant manner. The two-day long event was spread across a total of eight sessions, apart from three keynote addresses. Brainstorming, and exchange of ideas for the overall improvement of services and better returns on investment formed the highlights:

Dr TH Chauhdary, advisor (IT and communications), AP Government Hemant Sachdev, director (marketing), Bharti Enterprises Mahendra Swaroop, CEO, Times Internet Rajan Swaroop, CEO, Escotel Nasim Ahmed, CEO, HFCL Broadband Virat Bhatia, managing director, AT&T India Brig. Jagdish Malhotra, Army HQ, Signals

Session Topic: Value and Volumes: Striking a right balance

Dr T H Chauhdary, advisor (IT and communications) AP Government Hemant Sachdev, director (marketing), Bharti Enterprises Customer can become king only if all telecom companies are healthy, if they can make money, if they can invest in research and develop the market. Operators should consider that they are in the business of information and not only telephone. Every operator must become a multi service provider. We have to migrate from single service license to multi service license throughout the country. We are in an industry which is growing 70 to 100 percent year on year. There is just 1 percent population. The prices are at their rock-bottom. I don’t think there is a trade-off between the value and volumes. I don’t think there is much of a choice in the industry. We have to go for both. Volumes are important because we are highly under-penetrated. Mahendra Swaroop, CEO Times Internet Rajan Swaroop, CEO, Escotel When we added BSNL six months ago to Indiatimes’ 8888 service, the value added services actually doubled. This shows that there is an unsatiated demand in the interiors of the country for knowledge and information. The salvation of the industry lies in value added services. We feel that value added services are key the determinants in terms of increasing the volume as well but it needs a little bit of adoption time. For example, we established a value added service at Kerala for fishermen there. Our content is primarily vernacular-based as people don’t understand English everywhere. And this approach has turned out to be fairly successful. Nasim Ahmed, CEO, HFCL Broadband Virat Bhatia, Managing director, AT&T India We have been talking about rural connectivity and broadband for long. There are possibilities of maximum utilization of infrastructure as it is not being put to use to the desired level. Telephony alone cannot payback for the investments that are being made. It is the value added services. The crucial question is whether the present infrastructure is capable of providing value added services. Competition is really driving the thinking of value added services and value volume proposition. Take a simple issue of volumes. I don’t think a cellular operator is putting a state-of-the-art network in Rishikesh or Guntur unless he knows whether there would a few operators there. Competitive environment, driven by regulatory framework is going to be the crucial factor. Brigadier Jagdish Malhotra, Army HQ, Signals We have got phenomenal infrastructure on ground, but the exploitation of that is only for voice and nothing else. I see no reason why industry cannot provide value added services to common people. We also need to have data and multimedia connectivity apart from thinking about volumes and values. Volumes will go up once value added services are being provided.

A Mukhopadhyay, chief regulatory officer, Hutchison Sudipta Sen, MD, Comsat Max Shankar Haldar, CTO, Escotel Ajay Pandey, COO, Tata Teleservices, Maharahstra Deepak Maheshwari, head (technology), ISPAI Charles Antony, COO, Tata Infotech Cariappa Appaiah, V-P (sales and marketing), LG

Session Topic: Life in a Heterogen eous and Fast Changing World

A Mukhopadhyay, chief regulatory officer, Hutchison Ajay Pandey, COO, Tata Teleservices, Maharahstra Internationally, there is a quite a hype about data communication, but the progress all over the world is quite slow. The reason is not really because of technology march, but what information should be distributed. Multiplicity of technology, while giving an edge at the backend, is creating a number of challenges. The ever changing regulation and unstable regulation has forced the operators to look at multiple options and instead of taking a holistic view on technology. Shankar Haldar, CEO Times Internet Sudipta Sen, MD, Comsat Max It is important to bring the right technology at the right time to meet the business demand and fulfill the customers’ expectations. We have to make sure that the technology not only gives that upfront cost, but for five to six years, or the life time of the product, has the lowest cost of ownership. We have to deal with two types of innovations today— the disruptive and the sustainable. To live in an environment like this and take a call about what investment you have to make and what infrastructure, certainly is lot more difficult call today than what it was yesterday. Deepak Maheshwari, head (technology), ISPAI Charles Antony, COO Tata Infotech Technology is not about what is happening elsewhere, but also about proactively contributing to the development of standards locally. The biggest challenge for a system integrator is the migration of one technology to another. Seamless migration will remain a key issue. Cariappa Appaiah,  V-P (sales and marketing), LG Network is growing at the rate of 90–100 percent every year. Managing and maintaining the network is going to be a big challenge.

RRN Prasad, former member, TRAI Usha Rajeev, lead partner, PwC Amitabh Singhal, secretary, ISPAI NK Goyal, president, TEMA Wing Cdr BG Bhalla, secretary general, VSAI Ramji Srinivasan, Telecom Lawyer TR Dua, director (corporate relations), Bharti Televentures

Session Topic: Regulation to Competition: The Evolution

RRN Prasad, former member TRAI Wing Cdr BG Bhalla, secretary general, VSAI The US legislation recognized telecom as natural monopoly. 1934 saw the setting up of FCC and came the regulation. There can never be perfect competition in telecom. If market can regulate, regulator has no business to come in way of market forces. Reforms have been slow. VSAT technology is changing very fast and we have not kept pace with this. In 1999 we were allowed 64 kbps. It took another seven years to get 512 kbps, by then the technology has gone much beyond 4 Mbps. Ramji Srinivasan, telecom lawyer TR Dua, director (corporate relations) Bharti Televentures We have independent but not empowered regulator. We must also have an adequate dispute resolution mechanism. How do we ensure that the dispute resolution mechanism works effectively? Regulator can be empowered by providing strict enforcement powers. Interconnection is an important issue as any delay here would delay the competition. It has to be fair and cost based. The second issue is spectrum and the number of operators using it. Globally, the average spectrum is 17.1 MHz. NK Goyal, president, TEMA Amitabh Singhal, Secretary, ISPAI We have a very good NTP 99 that says it will protect industry, but we have done nothing concrete towards that end. The domestic manufacturing industry has to be protected. We have no problem for zero duty, but give zero duty for component and raw material. That is the heart of problem. Once competition set in, prices for Internet fell drastically. That benefitted customers. But there have been some regulatory gaps. The main responsibility of the regulator is to facilitate new operators. It should also guard against anti-competitive policies of incumbents. Usha Rajeev, Lead partner PwC Making available the incumbent network in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner to new operators is very important. Accounting separation is another important issue that needs to be duly addressed. Sharing of network is also important.

PS Saran, chairman, Pacific Telecom VS Ailawadi, advisor, Tata Teleservices Jan- Grondroup Vivanco, regional director, Eutelsat Rothin Bhattacharya, executive director and head (telecom), KPMG RN Agarwal, member (RRB), ITU Dr K Momaya, IIT Delhi Cariappa Appaiah, V-P (sales and marketing), LG

Session Topic: The Rule of Three: Where Are we Headed?

PS Saran chairman, Pacific Telecom V S Ailawadi, advisor, Tata Teleservices Let’s take up value added services, broadband, location based services etc. They have been spearheaded by smaller players. DoCoMo of Japan is an example. It has successfully partnered with many small content and application providers. There is a huge market before us and we have the opportunity to cover the entire country. I think the rule of three is not sacrosanct. There is a great deal of opportunity for collaboration, for inter dependence, and a lot many other such things. Jan- Grondroup Vivanco, regional director Eutelsat Rothin Bhattacharya, executive director and head (telecom) KPMG When mobile telephony was introduced in the UK, it was stipulated that the mobile phone companies could not sell through subscribers, but only through service providers. What happened was that it actually de-linked the big mobile phone companies in having a dominant influence when the market was in the initial phases. There is enough space in the market for a number of players. What we will see is that network service providers will largely consolidate because of lack of capital and that is something that will happen in the short run. We will see people setting together networks and swapping capacities. RN Agarwal, (RRB), ITU Dr K Momaya, IIT Delhi If you look at satellite communication, there is a different person who is a service provider and a different person who is a network provider. So the satellite is being build by different persons and is selling transponder to service providers. Whether someone is a sort of sub contractor or a independent sort of service providers, I think there is definitely a market for them and they will survive. Research has clearly shown that the share of top three players in the global context is very low. For small and medium players, if they are innovative enough and can have the capability to think globally, there will be sufficient space to grow.

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KEYNOTE 1: Prithipal Singh, CMD, BSNL

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