Telcos figure out ways to cash on smart cities

By Krishna Mukherjee

Telecom service providers are keen to participate in the government’s smart city initiative but they are all still evaluating how to cash in on the project.

Russian conglomerate Sistema Shyam (SSTL), which runs its telecom services under the brand MTS, has evinced interest in investing in the smart city project.

SSTL has developed smart cities in Moscow and other Russian cities such as Rostov, Ufa, Kazan, Smolensk and Novosibirsk. Recently, it got approval for putting up Wi-Fi hotspots at Agra, Ahmedabad and Varanasi railway stations and is working on proof of concept.

From a telecom perspective, one of the critical aspect is making sure that there is the right backhaul, which is very robust as well as it has high bandwidth so that it can either be a combination of fiber or cable or wireless cable.

According to Aman Sehgal, Regional Head, Sales and Business Development, UT StarCom, which manufactures and sells communication equipment for services providers, says, “Fiber is the most critical, it takes a long time to lay down and that is where wireless comes into play. From an access prospective, it’s blanketing the entire city with wi-fi, where you have users within the city who can roam around, and are connected always.”

Currently, operators are a little more susceptible to the fact that users are asking for this type of service that involves building out the fiber networks by operators because they don’t know from where they will churn out the returns.

However, Sehgal adds that at this point of time, with Internet of things, the return is going to be there but it has to take-off.

State-run telco MTNL is planning to provide the intra-city optical fiber connectivity for the smart city project. PK Purwar, CMD, MTNL, says, “It’s not specifically for smarter cities but we are building the intra city optical fiber connectivity and that can be used for smart city projects. We are still in the process of laying down our own priorities how we can contribute to that, so it’s in a very initial phase of discussion.”

At the same time, smart city requires intelligence system and connectivity. “Intelligence system somebody else has to put it as the ecosystem, so we will play our part creating the infrastructure in Delhi and Mumbai. We have reasonable degree of infrastructure and if there are any gaps we will try to fill those gaps from our side,” Purwar adds.

As building the intra city optical fiber connectivity is quite a complicated process, telcos opine that wi-fi can play an important role here as it’s an unlicensed spectrum and at the same time smart phones are wi-fi enabled today and their adoption is increasing in our country. Tata Teleservices is in talks with multiple departments and government bodies of the country to provide wi-fi service under the Government’s Rs 78,000 crore 100 smart cities project.

“We have started discussions with multiple departments and government bodies for wi-fi service under the project... wi-fi could play a role as one of the technologies which can deliver high-speed network to the end-customer, off beating to some extent, the issue of spectrum,” says Sunil Tandon, Head-NVS, Tata Teleservices.

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and Sistema Shyam Teleservices are some telecom service providers that are offering wi-fi services. While spectrum and mobile permits need to be purchased for 2G, 3G and 4G data services, wi-fi airwaves are freely available globally.

Telcos believe that at the outset, a robust infrastructure is required and, then customer facing services from the government and other bodies to ride on and there are discussions happening in terms of various proof-of-concepts.

“Smart city is a large concept which can mean different things to different people. So therefore, to bring in specifically some proof-of-concepts are happening across the country. I would say we are on the right track. Initial thought process has started. This will take a bit of time for things to fall into place but clearly the opportunity is exciting,” adds Tandon.

Experts say that in smart city project, there is an opportunity of co-creation as there would be multiple agencies, multiple bodies, multiple organizations and it’s all about the ecosystem coming together. Talking about the challenges in a smart city project, Rajan Mathew, Director General, COAI, says that inadequate spectrum, right of way, unavailability of sensors, analytics requirement are some of the concerns of the telecom industry.

However, the GSM lobby group is working with the government so that adequate spectrum is provided.

“We are working with the tower companies so that right infrastructure is provided, we are working with the local governments for right of way,” says Mathew.

Adding to this further, Tandon says that for the ecosystem to be robust, we want uninterrupted good quality power supply, we need right-of way so that we can carry large amount of data traffic through fiber and we need an ecosystem brought by start-ups and large companies in a fashion that are very easy to use.

Related: Trillion dollar smart cities opportunity