Fresh out of the Box

Many would have scoffed at Delhi's
fifteen-year-old Sarojini Mahajan, before her idea-of using human pulse to
charge a cellphone-was picked up by the Stanford University, this year, earning
her a token amount of $1,000 for developing the prototype. But that is how
simple things become different, just because they are done differently. When
following the routine path for long does not yield great results, some crazy but
out-of-the-box concepts click.

The developed world perceives SAARC as the follower of trends
that it sets. Interestingly, SAARC has been a pioneer of some exemplary changes
that the telecom industry world over has seen. Despite the global financial
crisis, Asian countries including India have been very optimistic. Since most
members of SAARC are developing countries and are set to grow manifolds, there
is a lot of room for these nations to look beyond the tracks laid by others, and
think beyond the obvious.

Industry pundits say innovation holds the key to success for
the SAARC telecom market. Dr Mahesh Uppal, director, Com First says that SAARC
countries are very dynamic. "It is only here, especially in countries like India
and Pakistan, that operators are surviving on slim margins. In a market like
Europe, it is difficult to imagine recharge coupons to be available in
denominations as low as Rs 10," he says.

The year gone by has seen huge amounts of FDI pouring into
the SAARC region. Foreign direct investment in information and broadcasting in
India grew by as much as 170% from Rs 1,290.3 crore in 2007-08, to Rs 3,492.4
crore in 2008-09.

"The foreign players are coming to India not because they
want to teach the Indian companies how to do business, but to get a share in the
telecom pie," says Uppal.

Some players like Grameenphone in Bangladesh and Bharti
Airtel in India were the trendsetters in outsourcing their IT to experts and
focus on their core marketing strength. This helped them build brands.

Wireless broadband is set to bring in a revolution in the
SAARC region. The total Internet penetration in the region is merely 1.8%. Most
SAARC countries are looking forward to 3G for some years to come. With this,
majority of the people in the region will get their first Internet experience on
a mobile device. Innovating to make wireless broadband more accessible to a
larger mass in the region will play a critical role in increasing the Internet
penetration.

Regulate and Evolve

Chandi Sreshtha, director, Spice Nepal says, "Regulators play a very important
role in the dynamism of the sector. In principle, they have the power to cripple
the industry by formulating and enforcing unnecessary regulations."

"Most regulators in the region are fairly new, hence, and so
lack experience even though they have the essential knowledge. The regulatory
issues and the policies need to be harmonized so that the regulations do not
contradict the policies. Regulators still think that tariffs need to be
regulated and spectrum fees need to be maintained at a very high level. These
should now be replaced by market dynamics and enlightened directives," Sreshtha
says.

Generally, regulators need to behave like guardians of the
sector including the operators. They have to be watchful about the standards of
quality and price, and the parameters need to be fixed taking into consideration
the kind of socio-economic and financial conditions of the country. The use of
Rural Telecom Development Fund or the Universal Service Obligatory (USO) Fund to
develop and strengthen the telecom sector in the respective countries is also
crucial.

Regulators play a pivotal role in the growth of the industry,
agrees Ilyas Ahmad, chief executive, Telecommunications Authority of Maldives.
"In Maldives we have already done some innovation on pricing for licensing,
which has resulted in a competitive market," he says.

Infrastructure must be made suitable for the local
environment. The availability of power could be taken as an example. "For Nepal,
alternative energy like solar power could be cost-effective and easy to ensure
QoS, as it is available almost all the time. Similarly, other countries should
identify their natural resources and help make the industry greener," he says.

Operator as Innovator

Operators are facing stiff competition in all fields. Mobile is the most
challenging battlefield. ISPs are making headway and getting into voice and
other businesses. Operators need to be more innovative to survive.

Most operators are looking at the possibility of outsourcing
a lot of activities, starting from maintenance to advertising. Tariffs have been
reduced mainly due to the competition.

SAARC members have a long way to go. "We have been looking outward for so long
that we forgot to look within our own region. In the past we had poor
infrastructure and no connectivity. But now the situation has changed and we
have resources as well as the required infrastructure to justify interconnecting
with each other or transiting through one another. The volume of traffic would
now justify interconnecting most countries of the region," says Thinley Dorji,
CEO, Bhutan Telecom.

"Innovation in the mobile world is at two levels: mobile
handset specific applications and operator provided applications, and we must
look at both the aspects," says Atul Chaturvedi, COO, Idea Cellular.

Here are some recently or soon to be adopted innovations that
can prove to be change makers in SAARC.

Customized vernacular language SMS is an application being
built by Center of Excellence in Wireless Technology, India (CEWIT) and has got
government approvals. One feature about this is that it also gives
interoperability. The proposal is to switch to 3GPP standards to enable support
for SMS in twenty-two official Indian languages. This is currently at the
handset level where the keypad customization for all handset manufacturers is
being discussed.

Some handset manufacturers are working on the probability of
developing a virtual assistant in the handset, whereby customers can put in
alarms and reminders on one platform.

Operator Level Innovations:

CallSpark: Currently, one can only search and dial the numbers available in
one's phonebook. With CallSpark, all contacts available on the office directory,
Facebook, Twitter, etc, can be integrated and dialed without remembering the
numbers. CallSpark can also transform traditional voice conversations into
interactive experiences by pulling real-time data from the social and business
cloud. In both business or personal phone calls, CallSpark delivers real-time
content from social networks, location based searching, reviews, and listed
public information before, during, and after the call. For example, one can call
a friend and see his/her latest Facebook status information before the call, or
call a merchant and see his/her location and user reviews.

Mobile Wallet: It's a one-stop solution to all needs. One can
make all kinds of payments through mobile money transfer. Security is one issue
being dealt with these days. Once that is cracked, mobile banking with real-time
transfers shall also be possible. 'FastTap' is also one such application which
allows subscribers to pay for commercial transactions, parking and toll fees
using Visa payWave by waving their enabled phones in front of a contact-less
reader. Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka are some of the quick adopters of
mobile payments in the region.

IR Remote: This is an application where one can feed in data
on all electronic gadgets on mobiles and also operate each one of them through
it. All household devices like TV, AC, microwave, etc, can be operated through
this.

Mobile in Vehicle: This is a telematics service which enables
users to remotely control vehicles using their mobile phones. The main features
include vehicle diagnosis and control, vehicle monitoring and tracking in case
of theft, route guidance based on real-time information from mobile networks,
play music or video on the car radio or TV, directly from mobile phones.

Location based Services: With the advent of 3G in the region,
one big innovation in the pipeline will be location based services. These
services enable a customer to talk directly to the cell site and search for
nearby outlets, etc. Advertising revenues can be big since operators can do cell
site specific advertising, etc. It also enables features like find a friend in
the nearby areas with the help of their smartphones. This service is currently
under test by Google and is coming as an advancement to their existing Google
Maps application.

"A mobile's utility these days is only restrained by
imagination. Everything from being an assistant to telling where exactly you
are, through satellite images, can be done by it," says Chaturvedi.

Some restrictions like English being the only language
available shall also be taken care off once vernacular languages come into play.
It can be a commercial platform where trading can happen with real online data
flowing in.

For a majority of new subscribers that are going to join the
telecom marathon in the region, illiteracy is one major challenge. Voice based
SMS services have made entry in the markets. Spoken Web is currently being
piloted by the IBM India Research Laboratory (IRL) team. It creates a web of
voice sites, instead of typical websites. People need only a telephone, mobile
or landline to create these voice sites or to access them. This will enable the
creation of new content in the voice enabled web portal that will help the
bottom-of-the-pyramid customers to get access to services and products at large.

These are only a few to name, there will be many more
innovative ideas that are still buried and unidentified. It's time to let loose
the imagination, you never know which one might click.

Heena Jhingan

heenaj@cybermedia.co.in