ARPU will grow from $18.34 this year to $21.42 by 2025.
Fixed communication services market revenues to grow at an annual rate of 4.6% from $6.1b in 2020 to $7.7b in 2025.
Voice ARPU will fall from $5.38 this year to $4.62 in 2025.
Bengaluru: Average revenue per user (ARPU) from India’s fixed broadband will grow more than six per cent to $19.47 next year compared to $18.34 this year, fuelled by the expansion of fibre to the home (FTTH) network infrastructure.
The ARPU will grow to reach $21.42 by 2025 and fixed broadband revenues will increase at an annual growth rate of 6.9 per cent over 2020-2025.
India is planning to connect six lakh villages with optical fibre in the next 1,000 days as part of the national broadband mission.
Sanjay Dhotre, Minister of State for Communications, said at a recent webinar that the national broadband mission of 2019 is to ensure broadband connectivity to all villages by 2022 with an investment of Rs7 lakh crore from stakeholders.
As of September this year, about 23,133 Gram Panchayats have been made service ready and 1.47 lakh kilometres of optical fibre cable has been laid under the second phase.
The national mission aims to accelerate the growth of digital infrastructure, bridge the digital divide and provide affordable and universal access of broadband to 1.3 billion Indians.
Though DSL is the primary technology to deliver fixed broadband services in 2020 in India, Deepa Dhingra, Telecom Analyst at GlobalData, said that fibre broadband lines will expand at the fastest growth rate of 15.3 per cent over the forecast period.
“Growth in fibre broadband lines will be driven by the focus on the expansion of fibre-network infrastructure by the government and operators like Reliance Jio,” she said.
BSNL to be the leader
However, she said that BSNL will lead the fixed voice and broadband segments this year, essentially due to its strong foothold in circuit-switched and VoIP services segments as well as in DSL broadband services segment.
“BSNL has been promoting monthly DSL broadband packages with unlimited voice minutes to drive its subscription share in the fixed broadband market,” she said.
According to research firm GlobalData, total fixed communication services market in India will remain fairly resilient during the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 and the segment’s revenues are poised to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 4.6 per cent from $6.1 billion in 2020 to $7.7 billion in 2025, driven by growth in fixed broadband services segment,
On the other hand, she said that fixed voice revenue in India will drop at an annual growth rate of 1.9 per cent during 2020-2025, due to drop in circuit-switched subscriptions and decline in voice ARPU levels over the forecast period.
Voice ARPU will fall five per cent to $5.11 next year compared to $5.38 this year, reaching $4.62 in 2025.
However, India’s telecom service revenue growth over 2020-2025 will be supported by mobile voice, mobile data, fixed brodaband and pay-TV segments.
Mobile voice to be largest contributor
Mobile voice will remain the largest revenue contributor during the forecast period while mobile data will grow at an annual growth rate of 18.3 per cent, driven by rising mobile data usage over smartphones and growing adoption of high-speed 4G services.
As per GlobalData stats, the overall telecom and pay-TV services revenue in India will grow at an annual growth rate of 7.8 per cent during 2020-2025.
4G will represent the largest share of the total mobile subscriptions in 2020 at 61.1 per cent and will remain the leading technology with its subscription share reaching 83.3 per cent by 2025, supported by the ongoing investment by operators such as Vodafone Idea and Airtel in the expansion of their LTE networks.
India exported smartphones valued at Rs1,781.1 crore in August this year, compared to Rs976.3 crore in March.
Both Apple and Samsung are stepping up their facilities in India, even as manufacturers plan to capitalise on the production-linked-incentive scheme.
Bengaluru: Smartphone exports from India are getting back to pre-Covid levels and are expected to rise as legacy smartphone makers plan to ramp up production.
As per the latest figures released by India’s Ministry of Commerce, India exported smartphones valued at Rs1,781.1 crore in August this year, compared to Rs976.3 crore in March.
The numbers are expected to further rise significantly over the next five years as manufacturers plan to capitalise on the new government schemes to promote production facilities in India.
“With both Apple and Samsung planning to produce their newer versions of smartphones in India, exports are all set to rise. The production-linked-incentive scheme the government announced recently will play a major role in making India into a major hub for manufacturing electronic devices,” says Shobhit Srivastava, an analyst with Counterpoint Research, told TechChannel News.
The PLI scheme offers a production linked incentive – of 4 per cent to 6 per cent on incremental sales – in an effort to boost domestic manufacturing and attract large investments in mobile phone manufacturing and specified electronic components, including assembly, testing, marking, and packaging (ATMP) units.
As per reports, the government committee in charge of approving the applications has given a go-ahead to proposals to export mobile phones valued at around $100 billion (Rs7.3 lakh crore). Among the applicants are Apple contractors like Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron and others like Samsung, Karbonn, Lava and Dixon.
More big players may follow
Both Apple and Samsung are stepping up their facilities in India as they plan to ease out of their concentration in China.
Foxconn, which manufactures iPhones, has recently announced plans to invest $1 billion in India. As per reports, Samsung may produce devices worth over $40 billion (Rs 3 lakh crore) in the country.
Apple recently announced that the iPhone SE models for the Indian market will be assembled within the country. The new iPhone SE is being assembled by Wistron at its facility in Bengaluru.
There are also reports that Wistron would be assembling the iPhone 12 models, making it the first high-end Apple device to be made in India.
“With more legacy players coming on board, we are expecting the overall components ecosystem to expand. This will result in other players joining in as well,” says Srivastava.
“India brings in a lot of advantages including cost-effective labour and proficiency in English,” he adds.
Even as exports have been rising, India has witnessed a drop in imports. India imported Rs1,050.1 crore worth of smartphones in August compared to Rs2,225.2 crore in August 2019.
The two new locations are Dubai Silicon Oasis and Kizad Abu Dhabi.
Dubai-based telecom operator has three datacentres in the country -Masdar City (Abu Dhabi), Meydan (Dubai) and a partnership with Equinix (IMPZ).
Despite selling its stake in Khazna, du will remain long-term tenants for its internal and clients’ needs.
Dubai: Dubai-based telecom operator du is set to open two new datacentres in the UAE to meet the growing demand from the digital transformation that is gaining traction.
Tinboat Arslanouk, Head of Datacentre Product Management at du Business, speaking in a webinar said that they are opening one at Dubai Silicon Oasis and the other at Kizad Abu Dhabi by the first quarter of next year.
“We currently operate three data centres – Masdar City (Abu Dhabi), Meydan (Dubai) and a partnership with Equinix (IMPZ). The five datacentres will allow us to cover key two metropolitan areas within the UAE and offer all options such as disaster recovery and business continuity, under 80km within the same emirate,” he said.
Moreover, he said that enterprises view on data centres and colocation is shifting dramatically and it is no more a real estate for secure, power and cooling.
Ultimate connectivity
“It is more of an ecosystem and access to services. We deliver key three points that matter the most to enterprises today – ultimate connectivity, carrier-neutral, easy access to hyperscalers and other marketplace players,” Arslanouk said.
Datacentre colocation refers to a service provided by companies that offer a shared, secure space for enterprise businesses to store hardware related to data storage and other equipment.
The operator recently divested its 26 per cent stake in Khazna Data Centre to Abu Dhabi’s Technology Holding Company for AED800 million. Technology Holding will own 100 per cent of Khazna once the deal is completed.
“The transaction is in line with the company strategy of pursuing datacentre development through either full ownership or commercial partnerships and will allow it to accelerate growth in this area,” du said in a statement.
When asked why did du sell its stake, Arslanouk said that they will remain long-term tenants of Khazna for its internal and clients’ needs.
“This transaction will have no implication nor will compromise any of our customers’ current and future needs. Furthermore, this transaction is leading to 100 per cent ownership by Mubadala. Mubadala is a key shareholder in EITC,” he said.
EITC is the parent company of du.
EITC is 39 per cent owned by Emirates Investment Authority, 20.08 per cent by Mubadala Development Company, 20 per cent by Emirates Communications & Technology Company LLC, and 20.92 per cent by public shareholders.
Mark Beaumont, Head of Enterprise Network and Cloud Product Management at du, said that they see a significant collaboration with hyperscalers in the future.
Rebalancing IT budgets
“The combination of the hybrid model will be key for all enterprises and government to achieve, compliance and regulatory requirements, and ensure the security of the environment is in line with the business needs going forward,” he said.
Ranjit Rajan, Associate Vice-President for Research at IDC, said that IT rationalisation and digital transformation are going to accelerate public cloud across industries as CIOs are striving to do more with the same IT budgets in the UAE.
“They [CIOs] are also striving to shift as much as possible to digital initiatives. 41 per cent of the CIOs are shifting the budgets towards digital and organisations are striving to rebalance their IT budgets by cutting Capex and rationalising Opex on traditional infrastructure and operations to make available funding for their digital initiatives,” he said.
The key benefits of the cloud, he said are cost savings, elasticity, scalability, consumption-based charges, on-demand infrastructure, access to emerging technologies are critical to providing the agility for digital transformation.
Startup sees rise in demand from consumer and corporate fronts.
Signs exclusive partnership with Emirates NBD, offering three months complimentary access to the bank’s card customers.
Mindhouse app functions as an online studio, providing meditation, breathe work, and yoga content in the form of scheduled live classes and a vast library of modules.
Dubai: Meditation-based mental wellness startup – Mindhouse – with an initial focus on the consumer market has entered the UAE after its success in India.
The company foresees a strong potential for growth on the B2B front and plans to undertake multiple corporate tie-ups in the coming months, to offer access to the app and bespoke wellness packages to large organisations based in the UAE.
It has signed an exclusive partnership with Emirates NBD, offering three months complimentary access to the bank’s card customers.
Founded by Zomato co-founder Pankaj Chaddah and ex-Zomato Chief of Staff Pooja Khanna, the company aims to improve the mental health of its users through app-based meditation & yoga courses that help increase productivity, improve sleep patterns and reduce stress and anxiety.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UAE has the highest regional level of depression, at 5.1 per cent of the population and the country also ranks high for anxiety, with 4.1 per cent of people admitting to a problem.
Global expansion
Seven out of ten people in the UAE have expressed their openness to seek help for their mental health issues, according to a survey carried out by YouGov for Dubai Health Authority in 2019.
“Mental health has come to the forefront with the on-going Covid-19 crisis, and the entire space has seen a surge in demand – both on the consumer and corporate fronts. This has enabled us to quickly scale up our operations, with over 100,000 downloads of the app, and 600+ corporate tie-ups already established in India,” Pooja Khanna, Co-founder of Mindhouse, said.
The startup has entered the region at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the mental health of consumers suffering from health issues, disorders, anxiety, stress, job loss, loss in income, and business.
“We have now decided to expand globally, with the UAE as our first international launch. We believe there is a strong need for a mental wellness solution like ours currently and are very excited to enter the market,” Khanna said.
The Mindhouse app functions as an online studio, providing meditation, breathe work, and yoga content in the form of scheduled live classes and a vast library of modules that can be consumed anytime by the user.
Built for beginners and advanced meditators alike, the app recommends content based on the user’s selected goals from sleep, patience, focus, relaxed mind and relaxed body, and their past experience in meditation.
The app allows the user to chat with the instructor for recommendations and queries, and also tracks daily progress against set goals. It works on a subscription model, with a quarterly plan priced at Dh60, and an annual plan at Dh120. Given the current circumstances, the company offers a 1-month free subscription to all its new users.
“With a population of close to nine million people, and high awareness of mind-body wellness solutions coupled with high disposable income, we see tremendous potential in the UAE market. We estimate that 60-70 per cent of the population will adopt digital wellness products and services, which makes the UAE an obvious destination of choice for us,” Pankaj Chaddah, Co-Founder, Mindhouse, said.
Many enterprises were killed because they did not believe in the tidal wave, Parallel Wireless says
Many telecom operators are moving to ORAN to cut Capex and Opex.
ORAN is no longer a new technology and it is live in many networks across the world.
Dubai: Opening the radio access network (RAN) space to new vendors is going to encourage innovation and reduce the Capex and Opex for telecom operators drastically, an industry expert said.
“Open RAN or ORAN is expected to change the ways networks are built and to lower future costs for MNOs. It is driving the need to move from costly and proprietary RAN solutions to open and software-based ones, and to create a broader vendor supply chain,” Amrit Heer, Sales Director for Middle East and North Africa at Parallel Wireless, toldTechChannel News in an exclusive interview.
Parallel Wireless is a US-based company challenging the world’s legacy vendors with the industry’s only unified all G (5G/4G/3G/2G) with software-enabled ORAN solution.
“What happened to Microsoft is going to happen to other legacy vendors [Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia] because we see them as vertically integrated, which means that operators cannot mix and match radios with baseband processing unit [BBUs] of other vendors,” he said.
In 2001, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer considered Linux users a bunch of communist thieves and saw open source as a “cancer” on Microsoft’s intellectual property but now, Microsoft president Brad Smith believes the company was wrong about open source and said that Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open source exploded at the beginning of the century.
Amrit Heer, Sales Director for Mena at Parallel Wireless.
Microsoft has even joined industry partners to create the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a new cross-industry collaboration hosted at the Linux Foundation.
Heer said the transition is happening in many markets for a while and the first transition, in the telecom space, happened in the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) about 12 years ago.
EPC is a framework for providing converged voice and data on a 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network while 2G and 3G network architectures process and switch voice and data through two separate sub-domains – circuit-switched (CS) for voice and packet-switched (PS) for data.
“RAN is the most profitable for legacy vendors and it is 80 per cent of the Capex and 60 per cent of the Opex while EPCs are only about 15 per cent,” Heer said.
In theory, he said that RAN, built by any of the legacy vendors, is supposed to be interoperable with any device, any core and any transmission network due to its conformance with 3GPP standards.
However, in traditional RAN deployments, he said that the software, hardware and interfaces remain either proprietary or optimised by the individual vendor, which means that telcos cannot put vendor B’s software on a BBU from vendor A.
So, if an operator wants to change it, the operator needs to rip out all of it – from the radio to the BBU hosting the software, he said and added that is what is happening in Europe and the US where operators are forced to remove Huawei from their networks in a few years.
Be in the driver’s seat
“More and more operators see ORAN as the only alternative to get them into the driver’s seat to deploy and manage their networks and don’t want to be locked in into another RAN supplier that will be driving their networks,” Heer said.
Moreover, he said that innovation was not happening as there was no interest for legacy vendors.
Parallel has been working for many years with Vodafone and Telefonica in helping them change and build RAN.
“The first transition took place in the vertical space and the second transition is in the cost of maintaining the legacy networks (2 G, 3G and 4G) for Vodafone and Telefonica.
“We started as a 4G ORAN company but our customers came to us and said they need ORAN for 3G and 2G to bring innovation to their customers and modernise the networks. So, we went backwards to bring the industry forward. We not only disaggregated 4G but also 3G and 2G. So, operators can upgrade directly from 2G to 4G or from 2G to 5G with a simple software upgrade,” Heer said.
When RAN is opened up horizontally, he said that it will bring in a new range of low-cost radio players and gives mobile operators a choice to optimise deployment options for specific performance requirements at a much better cost.
In the next 12 months, he said that Parallel is going to provide a fundamental solution that can replace any existing vendor as there as only two big vendors – Ericsson and Huawei.
“We are reaching that Holy Grail and operators will be able to blindly replace existing vendors with our product portfolio. We are connected to 60 vendors globally,” he said.
The software-enabled ORAN architecture enables a “white box” RAN hardware, which means that baseband units, radio units and remote radio heads can be assembled from any vendor and managed by Open RAN software to form a truly interoperable and open network.
“ORAN is in the networks of many operators and it has live traffic. Our software is in the radio, core networks and connects to any vendor who has 2G, 3G and 4G,” Heer said.
Monolithic blocks can create backdoors
In reply to an Ericsson’s blog about “Making sure that Open RAN doesn’t open the door for new risks in 5G”, he said that they [Parallel] have signed a contract with ESN (Emerging Service Network) in the UK, six years ago, highly secure and highly tested by the UK government.
“We have gone past the ORAN standards over the last five years. Any vertical-integrated company with their one monolithic block is very easy to create backdoors and it is extremely difficult when the architecture is modular,” he said.
Two separate forums were created to define the technical specifications for Open RAN – O-RAN Alliance and Telecom Infra Project (TIP).
TIP’s working groups cover topics including the Open RAN ecosystem, mmWave low-cost hardware, power and connectivity and optical transport.
The O-RAN Alliance, a global community with over 160 companies, focuses on defining a set of open interfaces between the different building blocks of the RAN architecture and defines a new element, the ‘RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC)’, which enables the creation of applications to optimise processes or launch new services.
Nokia and Ericsson are part of the O-RAN Alliance but Huawei, which is an active member of GSMA and 3GPP, is not a member of the O-RAN Alliance.
Ericsson’s name is not mentioned in the launch of the Open RAN Policy Coalition and critics say that Huawei may not be keen to join the policy coalition dominated by the US.
Deployments in Mideast
“Our architecture is fully interoperable and our interface is 3GPP standard. Parallel Wireless’ OpenRAN can support all 3GPP-compliant RAN splits. All big five operators in the Middle East are working with us but are in different stages of ORAN. Etisalat and Zain have been publicly announced. Most of the traffic is still running on 2G, 3G and 4G and 5G is still years away,” Heer said.
Moreover, he said that all of their deployments in the Middle East and North Africa are all on existing core networks and “our controller can connect to any of the technologies of other core vendors”.
Parallel’s ORAN is in 50 mobile operator networks and working with 25 mobile operator groups.
“ORAN tidal wave is here and it is no longer a new technology. All the legacy players can grab a surfboard and start surfing or the tidal wave will swallow them. It has happened to so many companies in the enterprise space as they did not believe in the tidal wave and did not grab the surfboard and so, they died. So, Ericcson needs to grab a surfboard instead of writing a whitepaper trying to discourage ORAN,” he said.
According to research firm Dell’Oro Group, the worldwide sales of virtualised Open RAN technologies are forecasted to grow at double-digit rates over the next five years with cumulative Open RAN investments – including hardware, software, and firmware excluding services – projected to surpass $5 billion over the forecast period.
AI to play a big role in organisation of courts, categorisation, process automation and extraction of info.
AI can greatly reduce the burden on lawyers and judges and reduce corruption to a large extent.
Bengaluru: Technology adoption in India’s legal system and judiciary is all set to increase post-Covid-19 and Artificial Intelligence as a paradigm will have a new manifestation, experts said during a webinar.
With courts in India already resorting to conducting deliberations online, the pandemic and the lockdown has unexpectedly fast-tracked the role of technology, in an otherwise traditional judicial functioning in India.
Justice L. Narasimha Reddy, Chairman, Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) and the Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, said that although the role of technology is bound to increase, there is a need to be cautious while embracing technology.
“Technology can add value to the legal system but should never replace a judge. Only a human being can decide for fellow beings,” said Justice Reddy, also the former Chief Justice of Patna High Court.
“The practice of law is an intellectual pursuit. Certain decisions are taken, based on the circumstances,” he said in a webinar held on Artificial Intelligence in Law, organised by the Federation of Telangana Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FTCCI).
Giving an example that in interpreting the provisions of the constitution of India, Justice Reddy said: “It is always dynamic. You cannot expect the principles or the phenomenon to remain constant. The constitution had to be amended nearly 100 times to meet the needs of society and humans. It is similar to other laws. That would be possible with the human brain.
“You cannot depend on a computer to do this,” he said, adding that except for statistical information, AI cannot be used for decision making in the context of policy matters.
AI should be used responsibly
“In order for AI technologies to be truly transformative in a positive way, we need a set of ethical norms, standards and practical methodologies to ensure that we use AI responsibly and to the benefit of humanity,” said Justice Reddy.
Delivering the main presentation, Advocate Sai Sushanth, CEO, Sushanth IT Law Associates, said the benefits of Artificial Intelligence to the legal system will be as impactful as it would be on various other domains.
“Technology has helped in the delivery of justice in times of Covid-19 lockdown. This is a small momentum that has already started. It is a stepping stone in introducing technology into the court of law,” said Sushanth.
“We have already started using AI with or without our knowledge. it can be used in commercial claims, mechanical processes and legal nuances. AI is going to play a big role in organisation of courts, categorisation of matters, process automation and extraction of info. It can greatly reduce the burden on lawyers and judges and reduce corruption to a large extent,” he said.
Giving examples of tools such as Compas – a risk assessment tool, Casemine, and CaseIQ, LegalMation, and even IBM i2 Enterprise Insight Analysis, he said, Ai, thanks to the latest advancement in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and predictive analysis, has been assisting lawyers and judges in the United States, facilitating in generating suggestive arguments, complete details of case laws, document review and case management, etc.
Use cases
In the United States, the use of AI is still limited to various tools by human judges and law enforcement agencies. Compas, for example, is used to study the historical data of those accused/defendants to help the judge determine if he/she should be kept in jail or be allowed out while awaiting trial.
IBM’s CaseIQ, the legal research AI, for example, has completely mapped the Indian law and uses its capabilities to enhance traditional legal research or move beyond mere keywords and retrieve relevant results using entire passages and briefs.
Giving examples of countries where AI is already adjudicating the cases, he said Estonia has an AI judge, who looks into all small matters less than 7000 Euros.
In China for example, in December 2019, they came up with a smart AI court to decide on matters relating to e-commerce, financial disputes, online conduct, loans, product liability, civil rights, property etc.
“The time taken to issue judgments reduced by 70 per cent, and an average disposal hearing time was 37 minutes. About 80 per cent of the cases were filed by individuals, while 20 per cent by corporates. About 90 per cent of the filings went without appeal. The verdict was delivered through a Chat app,” said Sushanth.
The AI, according to him, will help in reducing pendency. “The whole world is embracing AI and becoming technology savvy and the Indian legal system should come forward in adopting the technology,” said Sushanth.
The legal field, as well as the legal professionals, he said, should come forward and welcome the advent of technology in the legal arena and assist to develop itself for the betterment and welfare of society.
