Wi-fi based Mobile Broadband if treated like a digital utility can do wonders for the country. What I mean is Wi-fi can only be an opportunity when the people who are using the Wi-fi are also willing to pay for itcreated lot of expectation from a CIO. Their Roles will be crucial to successfully articulating customer-facing solutions, developing new revenue opportunities, creating capabilities for global representation and fostering innovation within their organization
According to C S Rao, Chairman - QuadGen Wireless Solutions, Wi-fi based Mobile Broadband if treated like a digital utility can do wonders for the country. In an elaborate chat with VARINDIA, Rao explains why it is important to have a wi-fi infrastructure in place for a spectrum starved nation like India-
What is the origin of QuadGen Wireless Solutions?
QuadGen Wireless Solutions started in 2008; we understood at that time that the wireless world is moving towards the 4G, and as we moved from 3G to 4G, the wireless networks have to improve in their performance with respect to Speed, end user expectations and the NW capability has to match the kind of advanced smartphones that we have nowadays. The network cannot be Dumb with Smart Phones used by extra Smart Apps and Consumers. This means that the RAN, Back Haul and Core network has to be optimized, and constantly monitored for its performance. If you have opted for 4G, you expect to be on 4G most of the time, and your handset should not go on to 2G or 3G mode.
We have a problem in India which is the voice call drop. In USA, another aspect is also IP Session drop, like if while watching an online video it suddenly stops in between. To address this problem, we were given the opportunity by AT&T and QuadGen came out with a radio network performance tool. It monitors customers who have opted for 4G and ensure that he/she gets the radio resources adequate enough so as to get the browsing speed of 10 Mbps. This helped AT&T to ensure Customer Satisfaction and QoS expectations and also save from additional NW investments. We started giving out these services to the US market from 2008, and made a revenue of $300 million over the past few years. We served about 100,000 cell sites for AT&T across all the 50 states. We also helped all Starbucks outlets, many malls, home depots, around 13 stadiums with better 4G coverage and made them wi-fi enabled along with AT&T. Taking our experience from there, we then came to India in 2014, where we have partnered with BSNL since, they have the maximum fibre reach in the country which we felt is essential to make WiFi as a successful adoption.
What kind of opportunities do you see in the India market today?
We are a licensed spectrum starved nation; if we had adequate spectrum speed then we could easily have had 4G speeds at 10Mbps per user peak speeds and 4 Mbps avg speeds. Wi-fi as we know is unlicensed spectrum. If you place a wi-fi at any PoP of Network, you get 250 MHz of Unlicensed spectrum access and you don’t have to pay anything for the Spectrum fee. But if you have to buy per MHz spectrum, it would cost you 5000 crores for 20 years. Spectrum costs is really very high in India. Since, we do not have enough spectrum, we have to take recourse in wi-fi. The Defence networks in our country requires a lot of spectrum and so most of the commercial spectrum that we require for our Mobile Users are not adequately available as is the case for globally harmonised bands. Thus commercial use of cellular services are impacted and Indian mobile customers pay a price for that true Mobile Broadband quality of Service. This is not so in other countries. So we find an opportunity in the Wi-fi space and hence we started playing in that segment.
Besides spending on buying spectrum, you would also have to spend 50 lakhs to 1 crore to put up for every tower, then you have to put other equipment which would additionally cost 25 to 50 lakhs for effective coverage. And this has to work 24x7; on the other hand if you have to cover a Software park of 200Mts and 100 Mts and in Building coverage on Wi-Fi, it will cost not more than 3 to 5 lakhs, because the cost of an equipment like Wi-fi Access Point is very less, compared to cell site equipment like BTS. In fact, a leading telecom operator has realised the opportunity of wi-fi and is offering its services aggregated with Licensed Spectrum at most of their PoPs on WiFi. Surprisingly with that use of Unlicensed and Licensed spectrum, such an operator is able to give better QoE. So likewise every operator can exploit wi-fi Unlicensed Spectrum along with the licensed spectrum.
India is the largest data consumption country in the world today, due to the entry and efforts of this leading operator. Like we pay for our mobile services every month, we should likewise be made to pay for the wi-fi too. But the country still has not reached that level where people would be willing to pay for the Wi-fi they are using free of cost. This kind of a model you will find in USA, Europe and so we are thinking of replicating this model here in India too. There should also be a proper wi-fi coverage in public places, in the sense that you should be able to get 3 times the speed of 3G at one-third the cost.
But is the Govt. keen on implementing Wi-Fi in public places?
Let me give you some instances. Dharmendra PradhanJi is a very progressive thinker according to me. He wanted all the petrol pump locations to be Wi-fi enabled and so asked Hindustan Petroleum to float a tender. Vodafone, BSNL with QuadGen and Airtel bid for it at around Rs 1500 crores for 5 years. But then a leading telecom player comes into the picture and assures that they will do it for free and hence the tender gets cancelled. After that nothing has happened at the HP Pump outlets. The same story continued when a similar proposal was mooted by a committee of Ministry of LAW & Justice and suggested that all District Courts, High Courts, and Taluka Courts to get its campuses wi-fi enabled. But again nothing happened. As per the Digital India vision of PM Modi and on the recommendation of the current Textile Minister, and endorsed by the current Minister of HRD, it was decided that 750 universities and 10,000 colleges should become Wi-Fi enabled. And again the tender was stalled when a leading telecom player came forward to do it all for free and nothing substantial has materialized after that. These kind of acts are only depriving the nation of becoming a Wi-Fi nation.
So how has been your success so far?
Wi-fi has a big potential and if used right can give tremendous user experience. In a public Wi-fi, every session of every user has to be traced by the broadband operator – like what site he is using, if he is doing any unlawful activities and so on. Also, somebody has to pay for that infrastructure and maintain it for 1 to 3 years.
All public places like hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, courts, police stations etc. should be enabled with Wi-fi, which is what the rest of the world has done.
I entered this domain thinking that this idea will pick up faster. We have so far done 108 tourist hotspots by joining hands with the Ministry of Tourism; a few significant ones are the Konark Temple and Puri Jagannath temple in Odisha where we have made the premises wi-fi enabled, Brihadeeswara Temple (Mahabalipuram), Taj Mahal in Agra, Khajuraho, Varanasi Ghats etc are other examples.
How has been the experience like for you?
The experience has been quite great as it has served societal purpose. There are thousands of tourist spots in the country, and we are planning to scale that number up from 108. Also, the Wi-fi potential is only there where you have a good amount of footfall at prominent places. We have planned and done 20,000 hotspots across the country but it is going to take time.
Given the potential there, we are slowly taking the enterprise model approach. Like to make 1200 villages wi-fi enabled, we have approached the respective MLA or the MP to sponsor his village from his Local Area Development funds and have asked them to pay approx. INR 2 lakhs for each village per annum. This will also promote the MP or MLA for the citizen in the village and he/she gets connected better with his/her visual image based messaging appearing before the citizen whenever a villager browses the net. Such revenue models on Wi-fi service delivery are really working for us. Such investments are pragmatic. We are also awaiting the BBNL Model of WiFi service delivery in 250,000 villages as a part of BharatNet.
How is the smart city business doing for you?
We have taken up smart city projects in Aurangabad, Bhubaneswar, and are thinking of doing it in some other places; we had bid for Ranchi recently. It is also true that making a city wi-fi enabled alone does not make it a smart city. You need to have sensors – whether it is the temperature sensor, humidity sensor, pollution sensor, traffic management, video camera, Solid Waste management bin based sensor, Smart Traffic Monitoring, Smart City NoC, etc. Again, when you put up these Smart sensors, you need to connect them. To connect them, we have 2 modes – through fibre (by taking the fibre all the way to the control room) or use wi-fi or 3G/4G.
We have also won 4 tenders for the National Fibre Grid worth about 3000 crores and so will be implementing these fiber grids along with Wi-Fi.
Can 5G be a success for a country like India?
5G will be an advantage to the citizens provided everyone gets the speed of 100 Mbps speed. Without it, 5G would not be a success. For that you need fibre connectivity to every 5G cell sites. We have approximately 5 lakhs cell sites across India and the fibre connectivity to the cell sites is only around approximately 18%. That has to be made 100%. 5G operates on much higher bands – 28 and 39 GHz bands. The question is at what price 100 MHz of spectrum will now be offered at, since for 5G at high Mobile Broadband to be a reality, every cell sites should have a minimum 100 MHz of spectrum. Earlier approximately 3000 to 5000 crores was the price for per MHz of spectrum for 20 years of usage. So if they maintain that price for 5G spectrum, then you will have to pay 5 lakh crores for every 100 MHz of spectrum for 20 year usage which would be an infeasible option for operators. The regulator (TRAI) needs to evolve a better pricing mechanism aligned with Global norms rather than going by the reference pricing earlier fixed for 3G/4G on per MHz basis. The Govt. as well as the regulator has to take a very tough decision in terms of spectrum pricing policy to avoid another earlier perceived so called 2G scam to happen in the country. The nation needs Digital India, True Mobile broadband, airborne internet speed of 10 to 50 Mbps and based on these factors the govt. has to decide the price of per MHz spectrum. DOT headed by its Secretary and a high-level 5G Forum headed by Prof Paulraj of Stanford University have done a lot of hitherto unseen and unprecedented professional work for a great 5G policy frame work for India and was unveiled at IMC recently.
