The Minister of State for ICT, Dr. Shakeel Ahmad, was appreciative of this year’s theme for the event, Ushering the ICT Revolution. “It is wireless that is adding the zing to the ICT revolution,” he said. With the telecom subscriber base extending at monthly rate of nearly five million, India is looking beyond the 250 million subscriber base announced two years ago.

“The horizon now is 500 million by 2010,” said Dr. Sarma, Chairman, Telecom Commission & Secretary, DoT. ICT minister Thiru Dayanidhi Maran had sounded the GSM Congress to look for a billion telephones in India as achievable target.

“India has the fastest growing telecom market in the world with an annual expansion of 27 percent,” Dr. Ahmad pointed out at the opening of the event. “Already we have crossed one million broadband connections. We expect to have 10 million connections by 2007 and 20 million by 2010,” he recalled. Broadband is the thrust area. “Taking it to the rural areas and providing e-governance and triple play are the challenges,” the Minister said.

Recalling TRAI’s recommended return to the convergence law, Dr. Sarma said the thrust would be to create the impact of IT on agriculture, veterinary services, education, entertainment, etc. “This challenge will be taken up,” responded Prem Behl, managing director of Exhibitions India. One weak spot in this scenario was the focus of Dr. Ahmad’s speech on telecom equipment manufacturing. The industry’s requirement in the last few years was worth US $9 billion.

Unfortunately, nearly 75 percent of it had to be imported. He called for a change in this situation. With the backdrop of the impending BSNL tender for 65 million lines, the minister revealed that 30 percent local value addition would be mandatory in future telecom PSU purchases. Prem Behl stressed Convergence India’s role by saying, “We create the synergy between suppliers and users, resulting in co-operation, JVs, FDI and specifications of equipment.”

The country-wise participation was also very important. Israel for instance was strongly represented. According to Robert Greifeld, president, Nasdaq, Israel enjoys the highest concentration of high-tech companies outside of the Silicon Valley. For the last several years, Israeli companies have been participating at the event. The fact that their number keeps growing shows how profitable it is for them and for visitors to seek critical technologies equipment. China is another technology leader and so is Korea. Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE are increasingly taking on global suppliers and widening their presence in India. At the other end of the spectrum were telecom services companies like Airtel, Hutch, Idea, Spice, etc.

Some of the largest attractions of the Convergence India 2006 event were the futuristic services such as IPTV, wireless broadband, 3G to 4G, satellite and cable evolution, DTH, etc. COAI was the first to see the potential of the exhibition and seminar platform provided by the Convergence India event, and announce a tie-up with Exhibitions India much before the start of the event.

T.V. Ramachandran, director general, COAI, expressed his delight with the tie-up and averred that the collaboration was another step forward in COAI’s ongoing efforts to broadbase its activities and to synergise the various streams and aspects of telecom that will take India to the leading edge of global telecom expertise. Ramachandran also affirmed that the exhibition and conference will provide a powerful forum for delivering benefits to all stakeholders and will be a vital tool in India’s march towards higher mobile penetration.

As Ben Cardwell of Andrew Corp. and others said at the panel discussion, “the world’s largest market is India, and it is also the world’s largest opportunity.” The format is right. “India is waiting to drive high-speed differentiated services into the rural areas,” according to Allen Mottram, CMO of Alcatel Worldwide. Stressing that broadband with voice, data and video would be more needed in rural areas, UTStarcom’s managing director for South Asia, Vijay Yadav, suggested a 10Gb programme for e-governance on this network that would make this rural thrust worthwhile.

“India can be transformed with the recent initiatives in computer literacy, affordability of computers and handsets, sharing of infrastructure between operators in placing 50,000 base stations across the country with USO support asserted,” C.S. Rao, chief executive officer of Lucent India. “We have an added advantage in that BSNL has 450,000 km of fiber, but what is needed is terminal equipment,” pointed out Dr. S.D. Saxena, the giant PSU’s director, finance, who chaired the panel discussion. Ericsson India’s general managing, Bo Ribbing, announced: HSDPI is live in India, which was demonstrated at their booths. “Once the spectrum is cleared, HSDPI will be available.” However, he advised operators to plan for it right now.

Mottram explained Alcatel’s lead in the new technologies and products that would enable India to leapfrog backwardness and move into the new technology era. IT and telecom are coming together in new generation networks. In broadband over fixed lines, Alcatel is already a leader and it’s establishing leadership in wireless broadband too with WiMAX products, he said.

“The latest development was IPTV where Alcatel has taken the global lead.” (At the Alcatel stall, its IPTV demonstration was a tremendous crowd puller). He won the applause of the audience for insisting, “high-speed telecom is a human right.” Referring to Alcatel’s JV with C-DoT at Chennai on WiMAX, Mottram said,“ India is waiting to drive high-speed differentiated services into rural areas.” The first decade of the 21st Century has seen a telecom revolution just as the 90s of the last one saw the IT revolution” UTStarcom’s Yadav said. It made us feel better as a nation, as the Indian telecom success drew in more foreign investment support and admiration. Telecom density went up; in just one year we have achieved what we did earlier in 50 years.”

Yadav forecasted speedy growth of broadband but added, “The real benefit would be convergence of services over the broadband networks. That would enable the benefit of ICT to go to the masses. In the transformation ahead when broadband would penetrate rural areas in an affordable manner. India would be driving technology that would set GSM growth at break-neck speed: Looks forward to next billion subscribersa global trend.” At present, only the rich can afford the copper wires that carry broadband. According to Ericsson India chief, Bo Ribbing, the all-in-one network is on the way. This would give the end user the power to use the services the way he would like to. Not only IP fixed line networks, but wireless IP networks would also follow. He talked of Ericsson’s lead in the area of multi-media IP networks and the architecture and technology of soft switches. Ericsson has three solutions and is in the process of planning the changeover with the operators.

The industry is also helping the changeover process through standardisation to achieve multi-vendor, multi-product networks providing broad spectrum of information management systems (IMS) applications. To operators, he said: “Don’t wait, start planning, all the components are in place.”

The seven track, three-day seminars saw presentations on a range of subjects from operators, vendors, technology leaders and telecom and IT experts, including government policy makers. Highlights included IPTV, IP networks, IT security, migration to the NGN, 3G to 4G, and WiMAX. Naresh Gupta, chairman of GSM India said at the event, “The excitement in the Indian telecom market is growing as it moves from 2G to WCDMA and then to HSDPA.” Airtel’s executive Mohit Bhatnagar added: “It is an Air War, not land war.”

(Courtesy Convergence Plus journal, Media Partner)