Imagining telecom and radios for next decade and India to take the lead

Imagine post COVID-19 lockdown, you are driving home and your favourite TV channel is being beamed to your mobile phone from sky by likes of say Tata Sky, Dish TV, DD Direct or any other service provider of your choice (e.g. Jio DTH, Airtel Digital TV, Sun Direct…) What does it mean? First, the quality of the video will remain good and will not deteriorate during your car ride like it does even with best mobile coverage. Secondly, your mobile data pack will not have to fork out the bandwidth as the television channel is broadcast and doesn’t not come thru the cellular network. What about HotStar, Netflix or Amazon Prime? Well you have the option of pulling it from the Internet or if your DTH broadcaster includes these, they too will come via sky. What more? A COVID-19 related alert or a flash flood warning can also be broadcast to your mobile phone. This can make a difference between life and death. Last year there was flash flood in South Pune where several vehicles and ground floors of housing societies were submerged in water in minutes as the water came too fast breaking all barriers. A person who was driving home called his wife saying he would be ~30 minutes late as there was incessant rain hence traffic was slow but moving. He never reached as his car was submerged. What if he had a warning voice / video message on his mobile phone about the water rising from Pune civic administration via TV broadcast.

People have been using mobile phones primarily for voice calls, Internet browsing and social networking. And, now those working from home log into their company servers. Students use video conferencing for online classes. So, can one have the Internet connection for tweets, social media etc. while videos in all of this and others come via broadcast medium like the television Direct to Home (DTH). It all gets integrated in the mobile phone and other personal computing devices in the hands of the end user.

TV channels directly on the mobile phone is an interesting idea. Quality of the video is based on the instantaneous speed rather than average speed. If you are downloading a file, average speed matters. But a video requires good instantaneous speed to provide good viewing experience. Unicast method used by mobile communication (4G and even 5G) doesn’t guarantee this. Further, it is predicted that the video content will increase by 8-10 times between now and 2023. Post COVID-19, this may go up even beyond.

India is a large, diverse and a content rich country. And, why not? There are 22 scheduled languages, over 1500 spoken languages, several powerful and rich regional cinemas besides giant Bollywood, 20000 culinary heritage recipes in a culture and civilization that goes back thousands of years. In addition the country is home to a giant IT services industry and now expanding to many other services such as tele-medicine, Yoga and what not. Post COVID-19, video traffic may zoom even beyond the factor of 10. Many activities like working from Home, education and others that have gone online will continue in that mode increasing overall digital traffic. Should we then be driven by the current stale state-of-the-art of mobile communication wherein more data means fatter pipes or deploy smart radios to create smart pipes.

Current communication architecture (Internet, mobile telephony and broadcast) does not have the provision for receiving broadcast on mobile phones. And, there is no native support for Over-The-Top content. Unicast mechanism for video will have run its course for the volume India will require in next few years. It will become uneconomic for telecom service providers. Even Jio may find it tough.

It is therefore necessary to look at broadcast spectrum, mobile spectrum and other point to point and point to multi point radios in a wholesome manner for the next generation communication topology. Further there is need  to optimize overall radio spectrum by utilizing underused broadcast spectrum to ease the pressure on the cellular spectrum. In a content rich but spectrum starved country like India, this is a MUST.

It’s fine grain mixing of mobile spectrum and broadcast spectrum to take video, text and data traffic together, split the video traffic to be sent over broadcast while rest of the traffic travels on mobile, fibre etc. Now, with this architecture, the input can be TV channels, Content providers like HotStar, Netflix and free to Air channel like Doordarshan. The traffic is desegregated into video and non-video and traverses over broadcast medium, Internet and cellular to be reassembled at the receiving end for consumption by the end user. Over the top (OTT) content should move from unicast to broadcast networks. We should create smarter pipes rather than put weight on our networking infrastructure by using clumsy fatter and fatter pipes. Just the way WiFi offload has been useful for mobile data, video offload is the next progression to optimize spectrum usage. Let’s look at TV, OTT, social media, voice and data as different facets of human interaction and take the lead in creating next generation communication technologies for these.

While working from home, online education and entertainment are obvious to people, tele-medicine, disaster alerts, secure communication for armed forces, communication for difficult to reach areas like high altitude or remote rural areas are other applications that will love video desegregation and smarter pipes. Even industry verticals like automotive can gain from this as there will be more software and electronics in cars than mechanical parts. Most interesting part of building infrastructure technologies such as telecommunication is that people find usages through innovative thinking that technology developers never thought of.

Now, is this wishful thinking or does the technology exist for all of above. The answer is that technology not only exist but has been developed in India. Direct to mobile TV may look futuristic but is possible today. Who would have thought we can create a movie on a mobile phone or watch a YouTube video comfortably on a mobile phone even three years back. System integration capability that is required to deploy, operate and manage such technologies is available in abundance in India.

What is needed for next generation communication revolution is visionary and forward looking policies coupled with the right regulatory mechanism. These must act as catalysts to bring these innovations to commercial implementations and create the ecosystem. It will impact not only India but many parts of the world, where countries are tired of high handed approach and cartelization by few global players and would welcome Indian leadership. Specifically, my request is for the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology (MCIT), Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and Defence Ministry to come together as major stake holders and come up with new guidelines on usage of radio waves. PMO can provide the trigger and over-arching guidance. This requires political attention at the highest level. Once that is available, we have expertise in the country right from semiconductor to system integration. And, if India takes the lead, it can lead next wave of telecom revolution with global impact.

We are into Lockdown phase 2 now. This week as described by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is most stringent. The Government is between a rock and a hard place (or “pahad” and “khaee” as the saying goes in Hindi). Longer the lockdown, worse it is on the economy. Maximum brunt is being born by the daily wage worker or the migrant worker Government has to feed now as they have lost their livelihood. How does one strike a balance?

Can the giant wheel of Indian economy start moving without violating the norms set to protect one from the corona virus? In order for the wheel to move, people have to start working. How do we have both the work and COVID-19 guidelines in place at the same time. Luck has it that it is possible to work from home for many people. But how about the work that’s not possible from home? A CEO can work from home but the shop floor mechanic, cannot. Let’s see the nature of workplaces people go to. A manufacturing company has manufacturing plants, warehouses, supply chain such as trucks, trains and even air cargo where their employees and contractors work. A bank will have offices and branches from where their business is done. On the other hand, an IT company will have offices from massive campuses to small remote offices. There may be special places like a data centre, mobile workplace like a truck, car, train and even let’s say an ambulance. Now human density in these places is well understood. For example, number of people in a warehouse or on manufacturing shop floor is far less than an office. Even within an office, a call centre IT company will be lot denser than a software development centre. And executive floor in a corporate office may have less human density than even an automated manufacturing plant. This list is not complete as retail meaning shops and stores, especially unorganised ones are in millions in India. And, one must not forget colleges and schools as many people are gainfully employed behind educational institutions. I know some of the leading Universities in US are thinking of how to get going as students live in hostels and physical classrooms are worst from social distancing point of view.

Question is, can these workplaces be made COVID-19 safety guidelines compliant? Then a supply chain company or a manufacturing plant can start operating, giving critical push to the giant wheel and alleviate the pain. WFH

Three key practices for protection from COVID-19 are: social distancing, washing hands with soap for minimum of 20 seconds and, wearing a mask. There are others but if I am asked to report to work to drive a truck, I will wear mask, carry a bottle of soap water myself and never go closer than 1 meter to anyone including my co driver and the cleaner. Same when my workplace is a warehouse or shop floor. or an office. If I am driver, I will ask my fellow driver and the cleaner continue to wear the mask and stay away as far away from each other while the truck is on the move.

Now can businesses enhance their quality processes to cover a pandemic. They sure can. India has rich expertise in ISO and other standards. Software export industry has demonstrated compliance to STPI guidelines thru self-regulation. Decades back, a Customs inspector used to sit outside software export companies to ensure there are no violation. Today STPI units ensure self-compliance. No one from STPI or Excise & Customs physically monitor day to day activities. CCTV cameras have been installed in most offices, manufacturing facilities etc. These can be used to track human movement and density. I will go one step further, wireless technologies such as Cell towers can give an approximation on human density say within a kilometre while a WiFi access points in a workplace can give the same within 50-100 meters. Geo spatial technologies can help a lot. These are good indicators to check if social distancing may be getting violated. And, let's err on the side of caution, technology gives a warning when problem may not be there.

These technologies are in use throughout India. What is laid out here is a different use case. You don’t need to look to US or other countries for expertise. Human density in a workplace is something we have better understanding than anybody else.

Companies have to worry about employees and contractors going home and coming back to work as well as mobile work force like drivers. But their tasks are simpler than police and Healthcare people.

I have not thought through detail implementation. Some may feel this is difficult. But these are not normal times. Extra ordinary circumstances require extra ordinary measures. It is difficult but not impossible. Close collaboration and active participation of all can make it happen.

Government in collaboration with industry associations like CII, FICCI, NASSCOM, TIE and many others can design and implement this. These can take into account Corona hotspots, red, orange and green zones.

@narendramodi, @CMOMaharashtra, @FollowCii, @Ficci_India, @Nasscom