 | Issue: | India 2013 |
| Article no.: | 1 | |
| Topic: | India, change, and the Internet | |
| Author: | NK Goyal | |
| Title: | President | |
| Organisation: | CMAI Association of India | |
| PDF size: | 192KB |
About author
NK Goyal is the President of the CMAI – (Communications Multimedia & Infrastructure Association of India); the Chairman Emeritus of Telecom Equipments Manufacturers Association of India (TEMA); Vice Chairman, ITU APT India, Chairman CTIA, India and is actively involved in policy and development of industrial policies related to the telecom and IT sector. Mr Goyal is also Member of the Governing Council, Telecom Equipment & Services Export Promotion Council and is former Director of National Institute of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD). He served the Government of Himachal Pradesh – including as General Manager (Development) of the State Government Electronic Development Corporation Ltd. He was with a telecom solution provider company as President (Operations) and served as consultant to a telecom multinational.
Mr Goyal has spoken at international forums on telecom IT, environment management, waste, radiation; manufacturing, global peace and more.
Mr N. K. Goyal is a Post Graduate in Science.
Article abstract
India is one of the most exciting emerging markets in the world. Its skilled, managerial and technical manpower matches the best in the world and its middle class is larger than the populations of the USA or European Union. This, and India’s time tested institutions, creates an environment that guarantees the security of long-term investments. Business in India faces cutthroat competition. India depends upon ICT, especially the Internet, to gain an edge in global competition and thrive in international markets.
Full Article
How life has changed! The whole world is changing. Definitions are changing. This article was written using word processing software on a laptop. Instead of a courier service, I sent this text by email. We are so accustomed to these computerised facilities that we hardly think of thanking James Watt and Graham Bell for the vital role they played in the lives led by millions around the globe. Their contributions led, over time, to today’s most comprehensive mode of communication – the Internet, a tool that is binding the globe into a small community.
This prospect brings a great deal of optimism in developing parts of the world like ours; it helps us believe we all are a well-connected close-knit family. The quality and quantity India’s IT skills are unmatchable, but India’s challenge is not problem solving, it is determining the problem itself.
Technology is changing at a pace that no one could have dreamt. Who would have imagined ten years ago that most people would have mobile phones in their hands? Who would have thought that letters and postmen would become old school? Even now, today, we do not know where technology is leading us. Computers have gone from room-sized, to desktops, to laptops to smartphones and now we have computer screens in eyeglasses.
Each day new technologies and new techniques come and go. With technology, we ride high on the efficiencies and usability it brings with little concern about its impact on society and its adoption demographics. Communication is in the DNA of each and every person, so we keep trying new ways to communicate, but many forms of communication fail or fall into disuse over time. With Iridium phones, launched a decade and a half ago, one could communicate from any spot on earth. It was a satellite-based system, superior to all at the time of its launch, yet a failure in the market that was nothing short of a disaster; the company that invented it suffered heavy losses. Even pagers, fax and the so-called ISD (International Subscriber Dialing) calls, all fall into the category of technological lost causes.
Some technologies, though, have become part of our daily lives. The Internet, for one, has crawled deep into people’s lives, bridging the gaps between people and between people and information. Radio communication technologies in public domain are a new addition to the telecommunications world. The rapid rise of GSM made it a worldwide favourite; it now accounts for almost 80 per cent of the market for cellular technologies. The use of more advanced mobile technologies like UMTS, IMT, 3G, 4G and LTE is now on the rise.
In India’s case, as in many other growing economies, excitement about technology is generally higher than in the western economies where people have long become accustomed to new and rapidly changing technologies.
This enthusiasm in India should seem very promising to local operators, Internet providers and the governments alike; nevertheless, they should tread cautiously as expectations are high. At times, technology vendors have not been able to deliver what they promised for a particular technology, so they moved forward to a newer technology and promised yet higher speed, more user friendly, more secure… more and better everything. Yet they all talk of providing high-speed data and mobility. All the access technologies are Internet friendly, doing away with traditional POTS (plain old telephony) system – the original voice-only analogue systems.
The newest generation of technology, which can run a wide variety of applications on the system and access technology neutrally, will provide a major boost for Indian and other growing economies of the world. This is because we will be able to buy an application based device and software separately rather than a bundled computer; and this will reduce the cost. Specific or application-based devices would allow a farmer to inquire about weather, communicate over VOIP, or even play games or see movies. This would enable a pervasive Internet usage, accelerate more inter dependent economies.
The tremendous growth of Internet has exhausted the world’s stock of IPv IV (Internet Protocol version 4) addresses so the world is, forcibly, moving to IPv6 with its greater stock of addresses. Very soon, in our connected world, even machines will talk to machines, but IP6v addresses will be able to comfortably meet the demand for untold millions of new Internet addresses for machines.
Business usage of ICT has increased exponentially over the years. Companies are facing cutthroat competition; to survive they need to attract customer attention, build market share and increase revenues. ICT service providers are likely to play an ever-greater role in the overall performance of every sort of enterprise. ICT leaders have responded to enterprise needs by reducing costs. Still, reducing cost alone is no longer sufficient; ICT must also drive revenue. Businesses need to learn how to adapt itself to new technologies, make process improvements and align their IT and business strategies.
ICT and ICT solutions offer India a global perspective. ICT has acted as our window to the rest of the world, ensuring that we in other industries like manufacturing, media, etc. see the world in the same sense. IT is now beginning to penetrate rural India, offering opportunities to those in small towns and villages, broadening horizons and offering livelihoods where there were not any.
Companies that realize the importance of ICT are planning to expand their ICT infrastructure and are investing in hardware, enterprise applications and management tools. Indian industries expenditure on ICT is likely to grow at a five-year CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 15 percent.
India is the seventh largest and second most populous country in the world. It is also the fourth largest economy in the world in terms of PPP (purchasing power parity). A series of ambitious economic reforms aimed at deregulating the economy and stimulating foreign investment has moved India firmly into the front-runners of the rapidly growing Asia Pacific Region and unleashed the latent strength of a complex and rapidly changing nation.
Today India is one of the most exciting emerging markets in the world. Skilled, managerial and technical manpower that matches the best available in the world, and, a middle class whose size exceeds the population of the USA or the European Union, provides India with a distinct edge in global competition.
India’s time tested institutions offer foreign investors a transparent environment that guarantees the security of their long-term investments. These include a free and vibrant press, a well-established judiciary, a sophisticated legal and accounting system, and a user-friendly intellectual infrastructure.
India’s dynamic and highly competitive private sectors have been the backbone of its economic activity and offer considerable scope for foreign direct investment, joint ventures and collaborations.
The industrial sector was among the first liberalized in India. In a series of measures, the government abolished industrial licensing except in a small number of sectors where it has been retained because of strategic considerations.
The government’s liberalization and economic reforms programme was initiated way back in July 1991, by the new Industrial Policy Resolution. The industrial policy reforms substantially reduced industrial licensing requirements, removed restrictions on expansion and facilitated easy access to foreign technology and foreign direct investment.
India automatically allows Foreign Direct Investment in all but a few strategic sectors. India allows 100 per cent FDI in electronics and telecom manufacturing. As a signatory to WTO, India permits duty free imports of all components and products.
Internet accountability in India and the world is an important issue. Today there is little, if any, answerability as to who has sent a message or how the Internet is routed. Because of this, a series of problems arise – spam, fishing, data theft, among others. Every day there are new solutions – and new problems. Our email inboxes fill each day with unwanted mail. The problem is difficult, but luckily the ITU addressed the problem during the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WICT) in Dubai, and it seems they found a good potential solution. So there is a good chance we will soon have proper Internet routing and answerability.
Finally, it is important to understand that Internet is not a onetime invention; it is a tool that needs to evolve constantly, even re-invent itself, to meet the changing needs and tastes of its users. That’s why the Internet has to be taken as the biggest invention on this planet, simply because it touches the lives of countless people, and is empowering people across the globe.
