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.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWHAT I KNOWS IS THAT IN 2014 AFTER MODI BECAME PM SOME COMPANIES FROM USA CAME WITH A PROPOSAL THAT THEY WILL INSTALL WIFI TOWERS IN 10 KM DISTANCE AND PROVIDE WIFI SERVICE TO ALL MOBILE PHONE CUSTOMERS,BUT ONE MINISTER WHO IS IN CHARGE OF THE INTERNET REFUSED THE PROPOSAL WHEN HIS ASKANCE WAS NOT MET
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting, thought provoking and insightful article! Idea of combining telecom and radio is splendid one and well articulated in the article.
ReplyDeleteKiran,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all let me thank you for using hour time during lockdown to stir up the pot and challenge the status quo. Now coming to your proposal, there are multiple facets that need to be addressed such as role of the regulator, support from the govt in terms of policy making and creating level plans field, availability of spectrum ( licences and unlicenced), pricing of the spectrum, promoting local industry for procurement of hardware and software, keeping traditional telecom business viable, healthy and competitive, promoting healthy competition that is impartial, free of vested interest and political influence and so on.
I listed some of them because we need to learn a lot from how we have addressed them in the past 25 years. There is very clear cut track record which one has take into account for any entrepreneur. I do agree that technology does exist such SDN ( Sofrware Defined Networks) and SDRs ( Software Defined Radios). Also Networks and Functions could be virtualize something we can adopt from current telecom networks. Also optimized spectrum utilization using spread spectrum technique is already deployed and MIMO is also under trial and almost ready for deployment.
Now the issue is about segregating services. Video streaming or video call is still a Data call with specific needs. Presently voice is free so users are loading up nets using internet or social media. Since there is an increased need for higher data throughput next gen technologies are expected to address that. WiFi did free the load a bit but it has it's own limitation being a shared spectrum technology. There was another standard re commended by Intel WiMax for providing BB services but it did not take off.
I think what is important to be discussed and debated is, is the govt ready to encourage entrepreneurs to devise a new business model. I think not. Look at companies like Tejas, Subex and so on who ventured into designing developing and providing home made telecom gear to operators...no support from govt as koreans and chinese killed these innovative companies....I can go on but let me close it saying it's a proposal to seriously think about but the ball is not with entrepreneurs it is with the govt...
Hi Sunil,
DeleteThanks for a comprehensive view point. In a democratic system like ours, there will be hits and misses. I am not saying let's overlook the misses. But if a step is a game changer for the country and brings in immense benefit, it's worth giving it a shot. Usage of radio waves requires active involvement of Government. Let’s assume that Government will take a serious look at it and collaborate with industry and industry professionals like us.
We all recognize the complexity of working in the Indian Governmental system which can oscillate from total derailment to being managed. But there are always very competent and dedicated people in senior echelon of the Government. And, that’s our hope.
And, I do not advocate blind and blatant support to Indian companies unlike some other countries do in their domain. Let it be meritocracy. So competent Indian companies be given a FAIR chance. Only support that would be needed is for start-ups or newly emerging but small companies that have the technology but not the size.
This unknown is Prof. ( Dr. ) Sunil Patil...forgot to register....sorry
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting line of thought Thanks for penning it and sharing your idea. Having worked for years in designing & building such pipes across host of technologies, as per my understanding, the current user scenario is a multipoint to multipoint. Individual subscribers want to move away from broadcast to consume content irrespective of time, location etc. And content providers are using host of platforms to dish out their content. The current solutions support it. But you are right that this will not scale beyond a point if we keep using more unicast pipes for serve each customer. This will be even tougher as demand for office collaboration, e-learning etc rises.
ReplyDeleteBut the answer may lie in multicast (not fully broadcast). Why not explore the option of turning up multicast on internet and thereby save the congestion atleast in the aggregation & core network? Will love to understand your views on the same.
Thought provoking, Kiran. India with a coordinated effort can gain lead in this and of course generate promote new avenues of business.
ReplyDelete