CEO's Conclave by V&D: Inside story of telecom sector

Industry experts debated various issues facing the telecom sector in the country, in an event organized by leading telecom magazine Voice&Data, a publication by Cyber media (I) Ltd. Dubbed 'The CEO Conclave', the event had four sessions, which included Songs of Experience: The Learning curve; Strategic issues and challenges before Indian ISPs; User needs and demands; and the Technology Roadmap.

SD Saxena, Senior DDG, BSNL spoke about the government's experience in rolling out its huge network in the course of which reputed institutions like C-DoT, came into being to cater to the government's needs of low-cost solutions, unique to the requirements of the nation.

The Government can actually pride itself on the fact that when entities like MTNL came into being, the teledensity in the metros shot up to 16 percent bettering records of developed nations like Australia and New Zealand. In fact the organization can still pride on that fact that the fibre-optic laid in the ground in the two metros is higher than the city of London.

Kaushik Dutta, Partner PwC, cautioned telcos there was a fundamental difference between the Indian and Chinese market in that while 50 percent of India's population is in the under 25 age group, 60 percent of Chinese population fell in the 26-60 years age group and thus India's addressable market potential for a telecom operator is still much smaller. Therefore telcos would do well to bear this dynamics in mind before making projections.

Korea was cited as a successful in case study by many panelists-the Korean Government's decision to use CDMA technology, its directive to ensure broadband connectivity in all houses, its scheme of PC Arcades to popularize the broadband experience. At the same breath experts also cautioned that models cannot be replicated wholly and can only be a reference point.

For instance, although the I-mode was a successful model in Japan, the possibilities of replicating in the Indian context may not be all that successful. One has to remember that the major demand in Indian is still connectivity. And it has to be affordable connectivity. While the need in India is for plain vanilla services, countries with higher teledensity have more evolved customers asking for more applications like games. Both in Korea and Japan, the driver of broadband revolution has been games.

Other prominent speakers at the event included DPS Seth, CMD, BSNL, Rothin Bhattacharya, Executive Director, Telecom, KPMG Consulting; Ken Wye Saw, Head, NSP, Asia-Pacific, Microsoft Corp.