Digital economy: India badly needs access to high-speed internet
Disruption to a long established socio-economic system, and its accompanying comfort of symmetry, was one universally agreed outcome of demonetisation in India, regardless of which side of the debate you stood. The pessimistic expectation of a rancorous miasma of dysfunction faded away giving rise to ingenuity and innovation to “get things done” — good or bad.
In an interconnected wireless world, a world without boundaries, market disruption is the norm, and it has been the quickest path to bring innovative products and services to customers, leading to rapid economic growth.
Yes, the disruption and pain caused by demonetisation has spun off the greatest market opportunity in the history of India — to fast-track high-speed internet access to every single citizen of this country — that too by disrupting the conventional business models of mobile telecom operators who continue to focus only on high net worth individual (HNI) and enterprise markets at the expense of the less privileged in the society.
India with a land mass of 2.9 million square kilometre, excluding area under inland water bodies, and a population of 1.3 billion requires high-speed internet access. We have one of the lowest internet access speeds in the world ranked at a low of 105, with average speeds around 4 Mbps against global average of 6.3 Mbps, China’s 5.7 Mbps and Singapore’s 18 Mbps.
Although our mobile use penetration is close to 48 per cent with around 600 million mobile users, active internet users are only 33 per cent of the population or around 462 million. While demonetisation disruption precipitated this opportunity when it was realised that high-speed internet access is required across the country for cashless transaction and transformation to digital economy, this opportunity was always there.
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| While India has around 600 million mobile users, active internet users are only around 462 million. (Credit: PTI photo) |
But as they say, market desperately requires a jolt to realise rivers of golden opportunities.
How can India quickly secure high-speed internet access without relying on highly capital intensive and technically complex 4G and 5G mobile telecom network rollout?
The strategic business opportunity for connecting India is through internet protocol, rather than solely depending on 4G and 5G mobile network expansion. How can we quickly increase internet access through Wi-Fi access? Primarily through the cable and dish TV service operators who have penetrated close to 90 per cent of the households in India.
These TV operators are beginning to realise the power and possibilities of their fiber optic cable covering almost the entire Indian landscape and have slowly started transforming themselves into internet service providers (ISPs) and started offering Wi-Fi internet access as part of their service portfolio.
The reason for their slow pace of transformation, especially in rural India, is mainly because the bulk of these operators are unorganised and a typical owner-operated cable TV service provider may own only 10 to 15 km of cable and cover 100 to 200 households. But their combined cable TV service penetration in India is around 90 per cent against active internet users of 33 per cent.
Mobile phone operators are aiming to take the maximum share of internet access through mobile phone service and package the internet access offer with value added services such as music, videos, and other bells and whistles.
Of course, these are of no use if primary high-speed internet access is not available. Hence, the case for broadband access to internet using a smartphone and secured quickly through the fiber optic cables delivering TV channels to households.
When we consider that cable TV service providers can cooperate and through Wi-Fi boosters and routers provide a seamless internet access service to those on the move also, and can quickly cover a typical densely populated panchayat or block-level area, the stage is all set for an innovative disruption in the internet access market using a smartphone device.
The theatre will become even more appealing given the poor infrastructure for mobile voice service, especially when the quality of applications such as Skype through internet protocol has become better than the often dropped out voice calls service provided by mobile telecom operators.
To succeed in the innovation and secure high-speed internet access across India, disruption of the cozy markets of mobile operators and their brand power is required.
This can be done by the yesteryears’ brand leaders such as Nokia, Ericsson and Blackberry (NEB). Apple and Samsung disrupted the mobile phone market dominated by NEB since the advent of mobile phone technology with touch screen smart phones that also included a camera, dictaphone, music and video storage.
These phones were largely beneficiaries of telecommunication technology’s evolution from plain second-generation (2G) voice service to 4G and 5G now. The new age handsets like Apple and Samsung built their brand through their enabling power to use new generation technology to transit and transact data at high speed — information and entertainment or infotainment, and data transaction or e-commerce functions.
Yes, like our good old Ambassador cars that stood watching Indian market swept away by the Japanese and European manufacturers, NEB were too shocked to act when their market share fell precipitously and remained as onlookers at the four corners of fast technological changes that gripped the interconnected wireless world.
The brands failed to move with time and embrace possibilities afforded to the customers through the evolution of mobile telecom technology.
But let us not yet write the epitaph of the fallen mobile phone brand leaders of 90s, as they are trying to come back with a thunder led by Nokia 6. The return of Nokia, and the possible return of Ericsson and Blackberry from the ruins of its early mobile handset empire could mark an important mile stone in the history of wireless communication market in India.
How can this happen in a crowded market of smartphones and, especially when China is pumping out newer models at such alarming speed?
NEB needs to do two things to make a big comeback. Firstly, disrupt the existing market where voice and SMS are fast becoming obsolete and then leverage its nostalgic brand value.
Nokia 6 for example, needs to disrupt this market by forming partnerships with companies that offer broadband services to customers. Companies like Tikona or Kerala Vision which are in the process of wiring customers to high-speed Internet could be the ideal partners for Nokia for their return.
How would such partnerships help Nokia?
Partnerships with players other than the mobile telecom operators will fast-track its market penetration and disrupt voice service selling mobile operators, but most importantly become the catalyst to bring together India's rich diversity on an internet access-based communication platform.
And how can Nokia leverage its nostalgic brand value to disrupt the market held by other major brands and take on telecom operators? Consumers may say, I already have my Samsung, Apple, Micromax and all the Chinese brands. Why do I need a Nokia? Can Nokia really do better than all the current brands? Can they overtake the Samsung, Apple and the Chinese brands common in the market today? Can Ericsson and Blackberry really make a comeback?
Yes, it is possible. NEB can change the whole smartphone market like they did for the mobile market in the 1990s. How can they do this? If NEB can unearth its brand power and use it to re-connect India, then it would be possible.
For most of us, Nokia was the first phone that we owned. Do you remember the first mobile phone you used to call your husband, then your college sweetheart? Or the first time when you called from Manhattan subway to your mother in Kumbhakonam or Varanasi? Chances are it would have been a Nokia phone. Most people still fell nostalgic when they think of the days when they owned the Nokia 3310 or the Nokia 3210 and had so much fun connecting with people.
Strangely enough, that was Nokia’s tagline — connecting people. And they were really good at that.
Research in consumer behaviour shows that nostalgia is a critically important ingredient for brand loyalty. Nostalgia takes us back to those days which give us sweet or dystopian memories of life many of which were defining moments in our personal life. And we look back and think to ourselves — if only we could live those moments one more time, or if only we could have avoided those low moments. Just like Maggi leveraged nostalgia for the brand in their comeback, mobile handsets can also use their residual brand equity to return to the market.
In his last interview with The New York Times, US President Barack Obama said in part “much of our politics is trying to manage this clash of cultures brought about by globalisation and technology and migration, the role of stories to unify — as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to marginalise — is more important than ever”.
This fits in so well with the Nokia’s tagline of connecting people across India that Obama could well have been speaking of what NEB can do in India.
The single biggest requirement of India post-demonetisation is high-speed internet access across the country. To secure the goal of digital India, we need to develop that strange sense of defamiliarisation with the symmetry and rhythm we are lectured to by the developed nations, where umpteen number of fiber optic cables don’t run through slums and tied to rubber and banyan trees.
Fast-tracking seamless high-speed internet access of around 20 Kbps can only be through innovation in India. That will also be a disruption to those mobile operators who continue to play the market by developed nations’ rule book.
So Nokia, Ericsson and Blackberry, would you please defamiliarise with the old India you were connecting, get away from the comfortable symmetry you were used to and rediscover the new India for re-connecting it through high-speed internet access?