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Shubha Madhukar
A virtual revolution in telecommunications,
software and consumer electronics is on its way. Kishor
Chaukar, MD, Tata Industries, reflects on the promise
it holds to transform and simplify our lives in future
In
the coming five to ten years, I see life getting busier
and, at the same time, less complicated because of advances
in communications. Greater connectivity will bring the
world closer and knit individuals and businesses in
a seamless web of virtual reality.
Interactive communication will
no longer be confined to entertainment; it will find
a great deal of application in business and make life
much easier for consumers. Both individuals and businesses
— small, medium and large — will enjoy the
benefits of communication as it percolates and becomes
available to everybody.
I think the future will see both
wired and wireless technologies, but the trend will
be to gradually move away from copper and fibre optics
to wireless.
The rise and rise of telecommunications
will transform the knowledge economy as we know it today.
Mankind's entire body of knowledge will be transferred
and stored electronically and everyone all over the
world will have access to it.
Catapulting communication
Making real time information available and then making
it easily accessible to individuals and businesses is
truly cutting edge. The rest is mere connectivity; broadband
availability, wireless, etc — means towards reaching
that end.
Today, telecommunication involves
the senses of hearing and sight. Perhaps not in the
next 10 years, but in the foreseeable future, there
is a possibility of other senses also being simulated
by a software programme. If communication can use the
aural and the visual, why not smell and touch too? Just
as the internet now shows consumers the bottle of the
perfume and its price, they would be able to sample
the fragrance online too! It is distant, but it will
happen. People will be able to 'smell' and 'touch' mangoes
online, before placing an order for a crate.
Road to convergence
The next 10 years will see the convergence of a vast
variety of technologies — voice and data, CDMA
and GSM, convergence of standards, etc. I would think
that we are just at the beginning of an era of convergence
of software and telecommunications.
Ultimately, we are talking about
the synergistic combination of voice (including telephony
features), data (including productivity applications)
as well as video onto a single network. As these presently
separate technologies are able to share resources and
interact with each other, they will create new efficiencies
and throw up amazing new possibilities.
Not long ago, the value chain
was disintegrated. Different companies had expertise
in different domains, like content, broadcast, transmission
or software. Now, across industries, the value chains
are changing. In communication technology, this will
result in the entire value chain coming together. The
disintegration of entry barriers across the IT, telecom,
media and consumer electronics industries will create
one large 'converged' industry.
Some of this has already begun
and the future will see more of these interactive arrangements
coming together. Direct-to-home (DTH), for instance,
is a reasonably well-connected new value chain that
is under active development. If DTH turns interactive,
it will be an additional loop in connectivity. In high
technology driven set-ups, this could dramatically shorten
turnaround time.
Convergence of communication
in terms of transfer of bits — voice, data or smell
— is one dimension of telecommunication. The second
dimension is the related software. The third dimension
comes with the expertise involved in using and finding
applications for these tools. Today, they are used in
entertainment, travel facilitation, etc, but this is
bound to lead to new applications and expand to an array
of new industries very quickly.
Life on a roller coaster
I see convergence dramatically changing our lifestyle.
As more of our needs are met by a converged knowledge
industry, I see people moving to a single-window set-up.
This process has already begun, as people prefer to
spend their time and direct their energies either towards
leisure or towards productive efforts to earn more money.
Already, businesses using the
power of communication are doing better. If I go to
the websites of British Airways or Lufthansa, I can
get a tremendous amount of information and plan my entire
visit without any help, in less than half an hour. Obviously,
I am not going to use an airline that does not give
me information in the shortest possible time or connect
me to a place I want to visit, in the shortest possible
time.
Think of this: you could log
on to a computer in Mumbai, feed in your image, get
yourself measured online, and get a suit tailored in
Delhi in time for your visit there, which is also completely
planned online, including travel, stay, appointments,
commuting, excursions and entertainment. This is not
commonly done yet because India doesn't have enough
computers and connectivity. Besides, not everybody is
comfortable with a computer, since software is not yet
sufficiently user-friendly. But as software becomes
friendlier and the means become cheaper, there will
be a much larger usage and businesses will leverage
the power of the net to tap markets in a much bigger
way.
The Israelis have developed a
1-inch capsule-camera which can be swallowed and still
continue to function from within the digestive system.
As long as the patient is in a connected area, images
of the digestive system can be accessed and sent to
a panel of specialists at different locations, who can
discuss and arrive at a diagnosis online. Think of how
devices like this could revolutionise medical services!
Worldwide web for the masses
There is no question of connectivity
not being able to reach the masses, the question is when
and how. Since our per capita income is lower, individual
ownership may not take off in India very soon, but that
does not mean Indians will not use the facility. I see
the benefits of connectivity reaching almost every economic
unit (families above the poverty line) in the country.
The use of the internet and its
services through public availability or through community
ownership at a mohalla (residential area) level
is happening even as we speak. Individual ownership
of sophisticated computers and broadband may not become
widespread for the next five, 10 or even 15 years, but
culturally, as a people, we are used to sharing.
In the villages, even today,
newspapers are shared through a public reading facility.
In 1982, when television first made inroads on a large
scale, people gathered around community sets or shared
with neighbours to watch programmes. Sharing telephones
is not alien to us either.
Low-priced broadband may not
become available in the near future but it is bound
to become cheaper over a period of time. A technological
breakthrough in wireless — there is already some
progress on this — or enhancements in existing
technology could make the benefits of broadband available
to all.
Tata Group in telecom
The Tata Group has a leadership role to play in telecom
in India with its wireless telecom vehicle Tata Teleservices
and VSNL for international voice and data services as
well as domestic broadband services. Further, through
partnership with TCS for joint ICT solutions the Tata
Group is looking at an integrated telecom play.
The CDMA network covers as many
as 2,500 towns and marks the fastest network expansion
in the country. The Group owns about 43,000 km of optic
fibre cable covering all major cities and is the only
company to have a capacity of five of the six submarine
cables connecting India. Its global footprint covers
240 countries.
Its current presence coupled
with flexibility in operation, innovation in technology
and ability to partner has placed the Tata Group firmly
on the way to becoming a leading telecom service provider.
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Uploaded on August 28, 2006
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