My BLOG : Vivek Madan - Simple Mobile Cell Service Can Save Many Lives

There has been lots of frequent disasters on large scale across world. No one can imagine disaster hitting Japan who has invested heavily on technology - Thousands have been killed and injured so far, but the loss of life has likely been limited by three vital early warning technologies: a new earthquake alert system; an ocean-based tsunami warning system and a mobile phone disaster warning service.

Japan has the world's most advanced earthquake early-warning system, with more than 1,000 seismographs scattered over the country. Collectively, they detect tremors and allow for brief advance warnings not only to vulnerable sectors like railroads and utilities - so they can slow down high-speed trains and shut off gas lines - but also to the public.Tsunami warnings take longer to generate. Residents of the hardest-hit areas in Japan likely only had fifteen minutes warning.

Communicating alerts to mass citizens effectively has become critical.Little-known technology known as Cell broadcast , a GSM feature for that has been around for many years, is barely utilized and could be effective in saving many life in future.

What is Cell broadcast/Network broadcast :

1. It's totally unlike traditional, point-to-point SMS, in that it can be broadcast directly from cell towers to every phone in range and does not use more bandwidth when sent to more users.

2. In this way it's just like a over-the-air television or radio, where bandwidth requirements do not increase as more users receive a signal.

3. Handset can be set to have cell broadcast enabled or disabled.

4. Cell Broadcast allows messages (up to 15 pages of up to 93 characters) to be broadcast to all mobile handsets from those on a single cell to the entire network.

Linked to the fact that most people now carry mobile phones with them at all times it becomes the most powerful means of mass-communication available. TV and radio warnings only work if people are using those mediums, but messages to mobile devices are focussed, fast and effective.

Maybe we, as an industry, should make this feature more readily available, particularly to emergency services, and educate customers how to set it up, where necessary, and how to respond should an emergency broadcast message be received.

Its time that Indian government use Cell broadcast technology effectively to communicate mass information during disasters.

My BLOG: Vivek Madan- Wishing all citizens A Happy Republic Day . Telecom has come a long way - Indian Citizens are the King. Lots more to be done

First of let me wish all citizens " Happy Republic Day". India has always withstood crisis and stand tall whenever demanded , all credit goes to people of India , their values.


Come 2011 we have taken one more step in offering citizens power to change operators while retaining mobile number. This service is know as Mobile Number Portability (MNP).

Time has come where combination of below will dictate who will gain with MNP in place:
1. Brand of company . Here existing operators Airtel and Vodafone will leverage as they are trusted brands in telecom.

2. Product offering and Pricing : Not only pricing of single service but bundled offerings of multiple services targeted at correct segmentation will be key.

3. Customer Service: Ability to call call center and resolve issue first time in friendly manner.

4. Quality of network: Experience of customer when they use services in terms of coverage, mobility, call drops, speed of connect and access applications.


All this sounds good for end user and in the end customer will be king. Customer needs to be very clear about why he wants to change is it better products, prices, service quality.


There is no doubt that broadband will be key for accelerating economic growth of country and telecom will play very important role in dividing urban rural disparity.
This can be done by :

1. Mobile Wireless will drive broadband penetration , jointly create passive infrastructure to leverage penetration to rural and incentive to providers in terms of taxes, license and equipment duties for rural telephony.

2. Long term telecom policy in place.

3. Applications to empower poor and villages like mobile banking , insurance , market updates, crop advices with partnership model (banks, insurance, FMCG etc )

4. Partnering to deliver e-Education and e-Health to rural areas.



We as an individuals must understand , India is country with unequal opportunities and divide between urban -rural, rich-poor is very wide. Its time we all make active contribution in our ways to bridge this divide not only through monetary contribution but actively engaging .



JAI HIND

MY BLOG : My experience 2010: Friends , Social Networking and Always ON

2010 for me has been year of being always online anywhere and anytime with information and my social freinds.

This has been enabled by :

- Mobile phone curently using Blackberry and wish to have iPhone this year. I wish one of u will present me this year.

-Access to always on Internet

-Access to applications ranging from email accounts , instant messengers (yahoo, msn), social netwokring sites (facebook, Linkedin, twitter).

Facebook has been interesting experience for me and I have been keenly following how powerful connected network of people can be . This social network if used smartly can provide one both social and professional edge over others.

This also brings to some key issues of being always on anywhere is addiction and this is one area where i believe i need to work on.

As parents its also important for us to handle information flow when our kids will be be part of social network .

- Give them exposure at correct age. All sites have recommended age to be part of facebook etc. Do adhere to it , dont think your kid will become smarter.

- Content control is most important , keep watch on contents accessed from computers and phones.

- Keep kids away form phone as much as possible.

- Even as parents we need education to handle information flow to our kids

Content creation has changed over years . facebook is an example of user created contents through wall post, pictures sharing . I have always been prudent to share relevant stuff as there is very thin line between personnal and public information.

Yes phones , social netwokorking are now part of our life and we must use it to best of our use rather then just to kill time. I aim to use facebook in 2011 to drive social work towards society which i have been planning to do for long. You will soon hear from me on this and appreciate support of all.

I look forward to conect to more friends , convert special fringe friends to special one and look forward to personally meeting friends , thanks to facebook which has helped in connecting to childhood , school, college, professional and old crush :)

JAI HIND and HAPPY 2011 TO ALL OF U

My BLOG: Wishing all a happy New year. Future 2011 Telecom & IT Watch

Year 2010 has seen many changes in the way Telecom and IT has evolved and year 2011 will be interesting to look forward. This blog focuses on Hits and misses for year 2010 and way forward for year 2011.

Hits for 2010
- Mobile Phone : Shift from featured phone to smartphones , leading the way with iPhone and now challenged by Google android.
- Mobile broadband penetration with anywhere and anytime access to Intenet driven by coverage and speed to access information.
- Customer Experience : Enhance user experience of content viewing on screens led by iPhone,iPAD revolution.
- Cloud computing adoptation by IT within enterprise realizing pay per use resources scalability.
- Software as service (SAAS) by small medium enterprises with salesforce.com leading the way.
- Popularity of user created contents demostrated by facebook popularity and recent Wikileaks controversy.
- Adoptation of mobile penetration for rural applications like crop market price, weather report , crop advice , rural insurance and financing.

Misses for 2010
- Sporadic Growth of mobile internet traffic resulting in capacity contraint on radio network impacting end user experience.
- Fall of Nokia in innovating with market and customer needs.
- Spectrum issues worldwide and high price of spectrum on 3G/4G.
- User experience and security on cloud computing .
- Apple undermining potential of developing economy resulting in Samsung and LG exploiting the market.

2011 will be the year of break and changes in business model . Some of the interesting things to look forward are :
- Pressure on mobile revenue and profits.
- Roll out of 3G and smartphone penetration in developing countries.
- major Adoptaion of cloud computing and SAAS by big enterprises. Major software vendors will have SAAS model as part of offerings.
- Evolution of LTE , clarity on WIMAX vs LTE postioning and roll out plans.
- Succes of chinese equipment players like Huwaia . ZTE over European and American. This year may have high impact.
- Leveraging mobility as enterprise workplace strategy.
- M2M proof of concept for smart grids, cities.
- Debate on freedom of information with Wikileaks controversy.

India has been forefront runner in adopting technology and evolving business model:
- Mobile broadband (3 G) penetration and evolution of products offering- Video calls, TV on mobile
- Adoptation of smartphones led by Samsung and unfortunately iPhone missing the trick.
- Pressure on average revenue per user (ARPU) for operators.
- New operators business level sustainability .
- Adoptation of cloud computing SAAS by enterprise.
- Clarity on long term telecom policy.

Wishing all my friends a happy new year and looking forward to your comments, suggestions .

My BLOG : Flexible Worksplace is the need of hour for creating competive edge , It requires organization culture change and IT readiness

We have been hearing about flexible workplace.
What is flexible workplace :
- Ability to access information from any geographical location .
- Ability to use any device ex laptop, desktop, tablets , mobile phones, smart phones. Earlier IT used to dictate devices used by end user , now employees dictates.
- Application availability and experience from any location .Applications used are changing from e-mail to access to sensitive information on ERP, CRM , Billing etc and video , voice conferencing to desktp sharing.

All the above is must to create virtual organization which offers flexible workspace.
Following advantages are seen of creating flexible workspace:
- Better work life balance
- Better attrition and ability to retain skilled manpower
- Better productivity
- Better collaboration across geography , skilled set and diverse teams.
- Infrastructure on space better optimzed

Not to forget traffic on street which kills productivity by killing travel time.This has seen one of the key reason of employees preferring offices to be nearby. Attrition due to trave time has become critical.

Challenges for organization:
- Shift in culture where hierarchy dictates physical presence
- Outcome/result oriented culture , trusting outcome being important as against when work is done.
This is more applicable to Indian organization.

Technology challenges:
- Borderless Access to information based on privileges form trusted and un trusted network. This could be critical applications within organization.
- Adoptability of applications to different access devices ranging from laptop , tablets to mobile phones (Feature phones and amart phones)
- User experience across geography on applications
- Adoptive behavior of applications whether changing codes for voice or video to adoptation on screen ranging from laptop to mobile phones

Flexible workspace has bigger impact on environment and society by :
- Reducing traffic thereby fuel consumption
- Load on infrastructure (roads, commercial space , trasportation)
- During HINI , organization with flexible workplace is better prepared , also during disrutive weather conditions.
- Not to mention helping in curbing spread of infectious disease and public safety

Even more is worklife balance , I know being in NCR how frustrating it is it is to live at one end of Noida , work in Gurgaon and vice versa. Its torture of new age lifestyle which takes away health and peace.
This may not be applicable to all type of work but some workplace flexibility is possible in all organization. Some organizations have become 100% virtual.
Need of hour is flexible workplace when technology can enable it then why not ?

My Blog: Wikileaks,Facebook etc are consumer created contents :News,status,photos etc !!! Is there need to regulate them or sensitizing users !!!

Success of Internet has been driven by freedom to access information. Intitial internet era was about contents being pushed to consumers.
Over couple of years this trend has changed a lot , no more contents are pushed to consumers but consumers have been creator of contents itself. This shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 is dominating Internet.

Success of Facebook and recently much in News Wikileaks is testimony to the fact that consumer has evolved in adopting Web 2.0 with contents created and shared by them.

This also brings interesting aspect of consumer sensitivity :
1. Wikileaks have been an open media with news generated by individuals and though it provides freedom to report and express but on other hand could be used to expoit if not authentic information published.

2. Facebook provided freedom to post on Wall , photos etc, its consumer who has to decide information to be shared.
There was example of cases where one was forthcoming in puting his travel plans and it ended up robbery at home.Similarly personnal issues if shsred , sometimes can be exploited.

As we move to new age of Internet where consumer created content , its pertinent to groom young generation in understanding issues . This requires special curriculum in schools and parenting.

Going beyond suggesting laws and punishment against someone enticing with wrong information needs new types of regulation .These new issues are beyong cyber crimes .Their is need to undersand complexity arising due to consumer based contents.

My Blog : Mobile phones can help save a farmer’s livelihood !!! Make better use of mobile phones in fight against poverty !!!

In more and more low income contries farmers have used mobile phones to improve livelihood. Over past few years penetration of mobile phones has surged from 2 to 25 per 100 inhabitants. Mobile is simple and affortable to be used by poor.

How Mobile can change life of poor farmers
1. Overcoming lack of information : Poor people often lack information that is vital for their work. This include current market price, weather conditions, advisory tips.

- Fishermen may have time to visit only one port while their catch is fresh. If buyer at the port are paying less money they must sell their. Mobile phones can provide information to select best option while still at sea. In southern India this has increased 10 % fishermen profit.

- Researchers in Phillipines use mobile to provide farmers with right information related to right amount of fertilizers resulting in maximising yield saving money and environment. Fertilizer represent 20 % of total cost. Too little use of fertilizer results in low yield and too high leads to wastage. Farmer can DIAL M and provide details of field size to get corrent usage of fertilizers.

2. Insurance and Payment through phones
- Imagine u own a small farm kenya and invested most of money in fertilizers and seeds. Draught sweeps and and you loose whole crop. Large farm has insurance but its expensive and requires assessment and inspection. Small farmer can nor efford this. To address to them following system was implemented : When u buy seeds, fertilizers use mobile to capture picture of barcode. Send this as MMS it registers seeds etc purchased against farmer mobile numebr.Solar power weather stations monitor condition. This determines if weather is severe to impact crops. If crop fails because of draught and u have registered fertilizer etc then insrance is paid bypassing costly inspection and assessment process.

Government Role
Government of India has to take full advantage of mobile technology and bring innovative usage of mobile in rural India. This includes correct- timely information, Insurance , Direct seeling to markey , mobile phone as bank/payment system.
Its an opportunity to lift poverty and livelihood of people but it requires innovation , proper policies and strategy . Government has to act as enabler.
There would be no harm in having separate commitee like UID team whose focus is to enable mobile adoptation and applications for rural population.

My Blog : Whats Mobile Number Portability !!! With MNP in India on cards Customer and Operators perspective !!!!

Mobile Number Portability also known as MNP allows mobile subscribers to retain mobile number and change operator.

Government has been proposing to launch MNP for quiet long and finally looks like protoype will be launched in Haryana in Nov 2010 and pan India launch by Dec 2010.

Customer Perspective

Customer has the advantage of choosing operator based on service experience , service features and service tariffs to suite his requiremnets.
There will be cost of shifting from one operators to other , currently assumed to be Rs 19, and also there will be minimum time one has to be with operator before one can shift.

Customer has to be very clear about what he wants from service provider , before deciding to shift. There are key considerations for customer based on which he decides to shift:

• Price of all services : Voice local , Voice STD, Voice ISD, Internet access, Blackberry, Hello tunes , SMS , Voice Mail , Roaming . Subscriber has to be clear about his usage pattern to evaluate.
• Service quality : This includes quality in terms of network coverage , service availability , service speed ex download , picture quality , customer care experience and accurate/easy to understand billing.

Most of subscribers are not aware of their service usage and tend to change subscriber for short term goals. This is true for low ARPU (Average Revenue per subscribers) who keeps on changing operators.

In service quality - network quality coverage is key issue and subscriber has to be very clear as new operators will have coverage as major concern. If u travel pan india , better watch.

Operator Perspective

Its opportunity for both old operators and new operators.

New operators will come with innovative schemes and will definitely drive more price war. Old operators need to retain existing customer particularly high ARPU .

MNP has been implemented in countries where markets are saturated with no scope of subscriber addition. Market segmentation and customer analytics beocomes key. Operators need to start focussing on differentiated services based on segmentation.

Telecom Market Perspective

• Customer retention and services will be key focus , particularly for high usage customers.
• Segmented offering will be on cards
• New entrants may spoil market with price war , here government has to regulate as unviable plans could lead to unviable business for new entratnts and spoiling market as whole.
• Undertstanding customer needs away from price , coverage will lead to innovative products in market.

MY Blog: 2G Spectrum Scam : Government projecting to be focussed on development has led India Down !!! Its collective responsibility

Spectrum is allocated by government to operators to carry voice and data traffic from mobile handset to operator network.
Spectrum allocation and utilization are prime important concern for any government worldwide as this is always limited .

In Indian context this is more important we have more population to cover and spectrum needs to be treated as national resource and requires long term proper policy in place.
It has been seen that where ever mobile penetration has increased economic development has increased ten time.

What has happened in last 2-3 years is :
1. Spectrum allocation policy is not clear in a country where maximum subscribers are added. TRAI and government has only one role that is regulate interest of citizens and nation by drafting policies which has long term perspective and regulate same. Is government still puppet of few business houses?
2. There is no tag on operators per circle , you need more operator to make pricing competitive. In India prices offered is lowest in the world. Was there any need to have more than 4 operators per circle?

This has created ambiguity in shining telecom industry which was offering best prices with 4 operators per circle .
When spectrum was allocated:
1. Top circles were already having high penetration
2. Rural and low end was focussed by existing operators

By allocating spectrum to new operators, government has :
1. Allowed entry of operators with no business viability
2. Most of them are doing bear min roll out and are looking for offloading equity at premium price.
3. Scarcity of spectrum created valuation of license and spectrum

End result of above decision have been:
1 Existing operators are hanging on to market . Drop in share prices of these operators are reflection of impact of policies of government.
2. 3G prices have been so high as existing operators required spectrum . By not allocating spectrum and licenses to new operators . existing operators would have paid for it and this could have been win win for both operator and government.
3. With 3 prices so high, government objective of cost effective wireless broadband and expansion into rural areas will have big jolt.
4. No single operator could take PAN India 3 G license and BWA was taken by one operator .

Impact on Nation
1. Mobile broadband penetration will have biggest impact .
2. Telecom business may bleed for some time and have indirect imapct on associated manpower

Who is responsibe
1. Its collective responsibilty of government as Telecom is backbone of country economi growth
2. By making single person resign , shows lack of accountability and reviews
The same have been issue with Common Wealth , its time for PMO to sit and examine how such big tickets deals are done with PMO sleeping.

My Blog : Save our Child from Monitor , Gadgets

We all are excited about innovations in access to information any where driven by high speed wireless access and smart phones .
We take pride in information and communication technologies. Homes with PC, laptop , TV and mobile phones are struggling to keep children away from these gadgets.
Addiction and dependency of young generation on using above is a big concern. These is no control on content acccessed , risk of exposure to unknown person and equally important is Health.
Results have shown that average number of kids with glasses are three times and who are overweight are four times compared to nineties.
Who is to be blames for :
1. Parents : Most of the couples are working and busy but needs to ensure and control content exposure.
2. People like Bill Gates , Steve Jobs . These people have done great job by bringing technology but what after then. They have made big money but do not have solution to how technology is impacting kids and future generation .

Reports suggest activities of kids in days :
1. 1-2 hrs TV with rich media
2. 1 hr on video games
3. 30-40 min on social networking sites
4. 3-40 min on unnecessary phone
This on average takes 4 hrs and there is no place for him to interact with nature and with weekends spend on Mall.

Is it not future generation is becoming slave of technology and their lifestyle will have huge impact on thought process and health.

There is no solution to this problem but this is the right time to start discussing.