Sharing a Common Platform

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Among the seven nations of South Asia which form the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), India stands out as the only country that has a liberated telecom policy; it has given impetus to the manufacturing and outsourcing industry, something the other member countries are still contemplating to adopt.

In each of the remaining six nations telecommunications has the status of being the officially adopted or legally promoted monopoly of incumbent operators. As a result, these nations are lagging behind the third world countries in terms of broadband penetration due to bandwidth crunch and low tele-density, which is not progressing due to high tariffs. Even the existing mobile subscribers in these regions don't have the privilege to get access to high-end content.

Voice&Data tried to bring all stakeholders of SAARC to discuss these issues in its annual event 'CEO Conclave,' and formed a SAARC Advisory Council on Telecom in November last year. The event was more than a handshake. The very existence of SAARC allowed for both formal and informal dialogue and interface to occur between the telecom giants of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, right through to the world's most densely populated nation, Bangladesh, and the tiny nations, the Maldives, Nepal and Bhutan. The discussion hovered around some crucial topics on international bandwidth, roaming and content sharing.

International Bandwidth
After several slow years, the transformation wave has finally started flowing in Asia's enterprise services markets. Companies are investing slightly more in IT and telecom, not necessarily because the good times are back, but more because one of the most substantial side effects of bandwidth glut has been a tremendous drop in bandwidth prices. And enterprises in the region are beginning to seek tremendous cost savings from their IT and telecom networks. But are telecom carriers doing enough to tap the huge opportunity lying within this region? The obvious answer is no. The reason being that most of the big international connectivity providers in this region are Indian service providers, and though they have started linking other geographies, SAARC as a region is still not a big focus area for them.

Similarly, countries in SAARC itself are not leveraging from each other's strength. They need to adopt a new plan of action on telecommunications, which should include complete digitalization of inter-country links, establishing an intra-regional high bandwidth hub, promoting research and development activities and exchange of expertise in the telecommunication disciplines.

India is considered a country which is riding the bandwidth wave in SAARC. Companies like VSNL and Reliance, after the acquisition of TGN and Tyco Networks and Flag, respectively, have enough bandwidth to fulfill the requirements of the neighboring countries. They are already providing international connectivity in other countries through the undersea cable route. But this can be done only through mutual co-operation. Apart from Sri Lanka, and the Maldives to an extent, all remaining countries are reeling under the pressure of providing broadband connectivity to users at an affordable price.

Sri Lanka telecom has recently tied-up with BSNL to launch the Bharat Lanka optical fibre submarine cable between India and Sri Lanka, which would help Sri Lanka in lowering bandwidth prices, and eventually result in massive broadband penetration.

Similarly in the Maldives, the FALCON cable system of Reliance Communications' subsidiary, FLAG Telecom, is connecting this International bandwidth-starved island to Asia, Europe, West Asia and the US. The landing station at Male is being set up by Wataniya Telecom of the Maldives, which is understood to have committed an offtake of a substantial portion of the international bandwidth that would be offered by FALCON. At present, Maldives is connected to the rest of the world through satellite bandwidth.

'All operators need to come on a common platform to share their success and failures'
�Shuhei Anan, CEO, Sri Lanka Telecom

Sri Lanka is the first SAARC nation to launch 3G services. What is your priority?
Just introducing a technology is not going to be beneficial to the masses, what is more important is to make sure technologies like 3G make sense to people. So our priority is to have content ready as this will be a main driver for 3G growth in Sri Lanka.

SLT is looking to buy a cable TV company in Sri Lanka. As a result we will have a dedicated channel for 3G content. The cable company will also buy content from India for localized Tamil or English content. We need to prepare for a killer application for 3G to sustain in Sri Lanka. Later we intend to introduce e-commerce facilities that can be leveraged using 3G.

Sri Lanka has always been ahead of other nations when it comes to introducing technologies. What is your vision for the next five years?
We plan to deploy next generation network and produce global broadband content. We already have good bandwidth capacity available thanks to the undersea cable connectivity. We also want to provide global connectivity with hi speed. Our customer will have seamless broadband connectivity through HSDPA, WiMAX, 3G, and MPLS. Our NGN will enable our customer to choose any of these access technologies anytime, and from any part of the world.

What do you think the operators from the SAARC region need to cooperate on?
All operators in the region realize how vital telecom's role is in improving the country's economic growth. Hence, all operators need to come on a common platform to share their success and failures with each other. They need to resolve the roaming tariff issue so that SAARC customers can benefit. The operators must argue how the development of a country will be affected by the telecom policies in each country. They must understand and study how the revenue tariff etc affects the position and growth of the country.